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CRTC Rules Bell Can Squeeze Downloads
pparsons writes "Bell Canada Inc. will not have to suspend its practice of 'shaping' traffic on the Internet after a group of companies that resell access to Bell's network complained their customers were also being negatively affected. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission today released a decision that denied the Canadian Association of Internet Providers' request that Bell be ordered to cease its application of the practice to its wholesale customers."
Traffic shaping is a common word in the IT world.
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
I would think it would be. If you're selling something to someone, and you change what you're selling them, then you've just broken your contract.
It doesn't surprise me at all that Bell would do such a thing, though. I've got a Bell cellphone w/3 year contract. They've added charges left, right and center since I've got it. So I'm tied in, but they're not. I'm going to bitch like hell about this month's bill, though, as the extra charges alone are almost twice what my original contract was for.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
This is what happens when you create a regulatory body by appointing former industry insiders and lobbyists. You get a body that exists to protect big telecom from the consumer. The CRTC only is able to prosper because the average Canadian has no idea just how much worse they make their life. I've had enough I say we move to get rid of them once and for all.
Mine too, used to be around $35-40 a month, and last couple months it has climbed over $60
Like a bunch of middlemen whining because they want Bell to stop doing what it's been doing just because it hurts their already shoddy business model. Unless, of course, these are last-mile providers who extend the Bell network into areas it doesn't already service.
While I don't think that they should be traffic-shaping anyway, the fact is that they are, and asking them to stop doing it just for these companies is unreasonable. What they should be asking for is Bell to cease this practice altogether.
If firefighters fight fire, and crimefighters fight crime, what do freedom fighters fight? - George Carlin
I'm in a strangely unique environment; Bell Canada doesn't have a DSLAM at my local CO, yet a CLEC (actually an ILEC from a few miles away that bought an ISP a few years ago) decided that it was worthwhile installing one. Bell won't put one in because they think that WiMax is the "right" solution for Rural broadband. Feh.
I have far, far better internet than I ever did in the city, which I was buying resold Bell DSL from the same ISP. And this is with the exact same hardware at my end.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
It's recognized by even the most free market-fanatic economists that the government has a responsibility to break up monopolies.
What good is a regulatory body if they don't actually regulate the actions that need regulating?
Disgusting.
And they want MORE power to regulate the internet in Canada? I don't think so. I would hope the conservatives in power, who are usually the type to want to deregulate industry, eliminate the (now proven) useless CRTC bureaucracy, but clearly that sort of action is only meant for banks and big polluters. I mean, heaven help us if we look at things from the consumers point of view for once.
after a group of companies that resell access to Bell's network complained their customers were also being negatively affected
That's a misleading statement. Bell resells access to its DSLAM- the "last mile" of copper to users. Generally Bell does not provide a backbone internet connection to independent ISPs. Bell is, in essence, altering the traffic of users and ISPs because Bell is the middle-man, and they want to reduce the differentiation between their internet service (Sympatico) and competitors. As I understand it, Bell has not produced any evidence as to what it costs to have traffic crossing their DSLAM.
An example of how this works (at least how I understand it) is via the company Teksavvy. Teksavvy buys bandwidth from ISP backbones, and resells it to consumers. In order to get a DSL line to the consumer, Teksavvy has to go through Bell because Bell has a de facto monopoly on the installation and maintenance of copper lines. Bell connects the copper line at the user's residence to a Bell DSLAM, which in turn is a network switch that connects to Teksavvy's network (and then on to the backbone). Bell manipulates the traffic crossing their DSLAM from consumers to Teksavvy.
..will we get a good internet service provider in Ontario/Canada, I have my choice between bell or rogers, or someone else who is supplied by bell or rogers. Also because my neighbourhood phone lines are old and crappy, I have my choice between rogers and rogers... if only there were a second cable provider. The good ol' CRTC loves keeping Canadian's choice to a minimum. (insert 85% Canadian content here)
ISP's have two options as their networks become more and more utilized:
1) Expand the network capacity by laying new line, enabling higher throughput of the entire system. This method will incur great cost, but will not create new customers, nor lose customers, nor will it increase profits over current offerings.
2) Throttle network usage to fit current utilization into current infrastructure in a more manageable fashion. This method will incur significantly lower costs than option 1 (lawsuits included), but will not create new customers, nor lose customers (as we are the only provider available to them), nor will it increase profits over current offerings.
What say ye, shareholders?
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
Is class-action lawsuit. Its been done before, and it will be done again. Lets put these teleco's in their place.
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
What right does the government have to tell a company what to do with it's own property?
EVERY RIGHT.
The ruling here was simply that Bell Canada isn't doing anything different for their resellers' customers than what they're doing for their own customers. Basically, the question before the CRTC was, is Bell hindering their resellers' customers in an unfair way? And the answer was, no, they treat their own customers the same way.
As to whether "traffic shaping" should be occurring at all, whether with respect to their own customers or their reseller's customers, that is still to be discussed in a separate hearing that starts next July.
To summarize: this really has nothing to do with "traffic shaping". That hearing is yet to come.
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
Starting some sort of grassroots "look what the CRTC does to you" campaign on the internet listing everything from degrading HD picture quality and sound in the name of "protecting Canadian advertisers" to allowing the "system access fee" on cellphones to exist. Right now if you ask the average Canadian what the CRTC is and what it does, they don't know. When you tell them what they do- they get angry. Inform everyone and we can maybe make a change
Also, the traffic getting shaped is almost always pirating of some form (and yes, it has happened to me and it was while downloading fansubs, which are technically illegal)
Even if that's accurate, what business is it of Bell's what kind of data is contained within my packets? Do they also listen to my phone calls so they can degrade the quality of those that talk about activities that may be illegal?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
internet is not your local ma&pa shop or small business.
...
internet affects A LOT of things. leave aside entertainment, a lot of services that are serving vital functions of the society ranging from companies serving in security areas to health industry, even many local and national government organizations run a lot of services for performing the daily tasks they are responsible with.
no, internet, no part of it can be anyone's backyard, anyone's 'own property'. its VERY vital and VERY public, VERY STRATEGICAL to be allowed to.
think of the land ownership concept. are landowners allowed to do anything on their property, because they bought them or leased them ? what if i wanted to fill all the land i own with dung ? or what if i decided to feed wild wolves in it ? or god forbid, what if i decided to declare my own little kingdom's independency ?
seems far fetched ? it isnt. until 150 years ago or so, there werent laws that are preventing individuals or companies from buying land larger than a certain size.
if you let an individual buy enough land, that land would eventually have the capability to sustain itself in regard to all needs and services, from mining to agriculture, and therefore could easily be independent of the nation it was in. think - everyting belonging to one man or company in an area the size of california. or scotland. or ireland
so to prevent this, laws were made. in modern countries, you cant buy more than a certain defined area of land.
internet is no different than land. noone has the right to close a portion and do whatever they please on it.
Read radical news here
Complain that they are making a "material change" and they'll have to let you out.
The topic is misleading; the decision made was that Bell was not unfairly discriminating aganist wholesale providers (like Teksavvy) versus their own customers. The CRTC has not yet reached a decision about the whole issue of traffic shaping in general (though they did find that Bell had enough justification to implement it against their wholesalers so as not to discriminate against direct customers). Michael Geist explains it better.
thats not traffic shaping, thats violating the contract.
Read radical news here
The CRTC has other problems too, they try and shape programming, and control how much "foreign" content is shown. Really, in a world where we need to be a lot closer to each other and have a wider perspective, they are trying to enforce quite the opposite. Perhaps cornering a means of obtaining "foreign" content such as Bittorrent is an issue very close to their heart for that reason.
Twinstiq, game news
So basically what happens is:
Bell's solution: Our customers are leaving to 3rd-parties because they're tired of getting screwed by our messed-up policies and cruddy service. But wait, we control a small part of the lines that 90% of the competition uses. So, in order to not lose customers, as opposed to fixing the issues, we'll just give everyone the same problem and to make their customers' connections suck too.
Sorry, but the "we're screwing everyone equally" answer doesn't add up.
It's plainly anti-competitive, all you have to ask is:
If Bell didn't have the ability to interfere with 3rd-party connections, would this issue exist, and would the other ISP's gain customers. If the issue wouldn't exist, or the other ISP's would gain customers, then Bell is abusing their control of the lines and monopoly therein.
They don't seem to have a problem doing that, either. They (and Telus) changed the rules for text messages back in August when they started charging 15 cents for every message received unless you went on a plan.
Telus also informed us back in August that their new billing policy was to charge for the following month's Internet service in advance, effective immediately. So our bill for that month was double. Nice little cash-grab for them.
My response was to investigate other providers. We informed them a couple of weeks later that our new policy was to cancel our service with them.
I don't care why you're posting AC
Why does the government regulate the business of a utility? In principle you could say that if the utility tried to shaft its customers, they would switch to the competition. In practice, there are three main issues.
Of course, the ISP & the backbone has to prioritize traffic when they are using much of the bandwidth of a pipe. And then traffic shaping might even make customers happy (prioritizing VoIP over eDonkey makes sense, right?) But whatever they do, they should do it in the open.
The right where they supported the company in developing the infrastructure that said company uses. Do you think these companies became monopolies out of their superior offerings? No, it's because they lobbied for control, got government grants and right-of-way, and laid the road with government help. The concept was that by doing so, they could make a profit and help the people.
The problem is that now there's no incentive to main, increase, or otherwise improve service. They're in control, nobody else can break the entry barriers created by the government-granted monopoly, and competition is pretty much nill when drilled down to the "how do I get connected" arena.
In this case, the right would be based in the fairness of contracts. From my opinion, the entire argument was backwards in the first place. Traffic shaping isn't bad in and of itself but when it is being used to defeat terms of a contract then the government has every right to intervene and force the company to honor it's contracts even if they are implied by advertising and statement's made by the company. If you purchased a corvette from a dealership after reading that it had a powerful V8 motor in the sales literature the dealship offered you just to find that it has a 4 cylinder when you took delivery, you would understand that principle.
Shaping traffic to ensure the overall health of the network is fine but you can't give someone something less then you agreed to when selling them the service. Also, no guaranteeing the speed is different then deliberately impairing the speed. If the speed is slowed through no fault of your own, you didn't violate that contract. When it is slowed because of something you are doing, then you did. The government has every right to ensure that you the customer aren't being deceived or otherwise lied to when purchasing something and they have every right to stop the deception from happening.
in modern countries, you cant buy more than a certain defined area of land.
Have you any citations from North America?
At the end of your contract, do like I am doing right now:
go for this: $10/mo 100 min and you still get Voicemail, Call Display, etc
http://www.virginmobile.ca/vmc/en/rates/rate-plans-prepaid-by-the-month.do?lang=en
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
P2P is not (yet, as far as I know) illegal in Canada. At any rate ISPs should NOT be policing the Internet (because, among other reasons, LAWS are arbitrary and bandwidth is neutral). I wish I could just say I'm going to drop Bell Canada as an ISP but I am not using Bell Canada, I am using a far cheaper and more net neutral ISP. Unfortunately Bell Canada has an infrastructure monopoly which is supposed to be regulated to prevent abuse.
The CRTC has become a corporate pawn (notice the introduction of Fox News into Canada and the denial of Al Jazeera), amongst other right-wing favouritisms over the years. I've personally complained to the CRTC in the past (about another issue) but they only told me I need to complain to my member of parliament. I would dismantle the CRTC if I could because they are worthless (to consumers) except to the corporate broadcasting/telecommunication elites in this country.
*cough* online price plan change to Student Plan *cough* don't let this secret get out too far or they might stop it *cough*
Tomato/MLPPP http://fixppp.org/index.php?p=documentation Tomato/MLPPP is a fork of the popular Tomato firmware (http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato) for consumer broadband routers. The primary goal is to enable users to bond multiple DSL connections using MultiLink PPP (MLPPP), and/or to circumvent Bell Canada's DPI-based throttling by using MLPPP on a single DSL line.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world > > Those who understand binary and those who don't
I hate to be the guy that nitpicks over something trivial, but phone systems are designed to give constant bandwidth to a phone call, so the quality can neither improve nor degrade... That's why you occasionally get "The network is busy, please try again later" messages when you try to make a call... the phone system can't establish a circuit for you.
But to comment on "Do they also listen to my phone calls", I'd have to say "yes and no". Phone companies monitor their networks, and may monitor calls carried on their network - it is their network, after all, and you give up your right to privacy (at least privacy from the phone company) if you use their network for a phone call.
I hate to side with telecoms on anything, but in this case I think I need to - as long as people sign up to use a service on company X's network, company X can do whatever they want with the packets that find their way on to the network (provided that no false advertisements, misrepresentations, or contract breaches occur).
In the case of Bell Canada, I think the most-likely-to-succeed attack vector would be "the service agreement as signed implied impartial packet routing and transmission, but they're not doing that", not "OH NOES THEY'RE IN UR PACKETS LOOKIN AT UR PRON".
That is in no way misleading. Companies buy access from Bell and resell it to individual customers. Bell is tampering with that access and it negatively affects the resellers' customers. All of that is fact.
If the situation you describe is true, that makes it even worse because it is not Bell's bandwidth that Bell is throttling. They are throttling the bandwidth of someone else's network and doing it under false pretenses.
I don't know anything about Canadian government. If you testify to this CRTC regulator and lie, does that constitute perjury? If so, someone should make some noise about that.
This is exactly what I did a month ago, and it ended up saving me 10$ and giving me more services
What right does the government have to tell a company what to do with it's own property?
Are you in denial about the current economic state of affairs? Companies should not necessarily enjoy the same rights and priviledges with their property, or other peoples property, as individuals should.
And one of the reasons is that a big, nasty company can fuck a whole lot of individuals. And frankly, I don't think our governments enjoy that kind of competition.
I guess this just proves that these are the most dangerous words in the English language: "Hi, I'm from the government. I'm here to help."
First and foremost, those backbones and wires and capital were primarily paid for by taxpayers. Bell Canada is a government-created monopoly -- we needed phone service and we wanted good nation-wide phone service, so the government paid for the massive infrastructure necessary to get them going instead of having dozens of tiny incompatible services.
So while Bell Canada has a monopoly on national wiring it is ONLY because taxpayers paid for it, and as a result they are required to follow certain rules in the interests of those taxpayers.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
In most cases, the network was built with taxpayer dollars or the company was granted a monopoly by the government. All of a sudden they are more than a private corp trying to make money. They are now a private corp serving the public interests, and that brings a large chunk of accountability.
Note: IACLC (I am a Classic Liberal Capitalist)
The government can't save you.
Why don't you cancel the contract then ? Over here (netherlands) the customer can immediately end his contract if the terms are changed.
how about !neutrality
Shaping traffic to ensure the overall health of the network is fine
I don't have a major philosophical argument against this statement. The problem arises when:
a) There are not formalized and published rules about the shaping
b) Shaping isn't done discriminately (i.e. favouring one protocol over another, like VOIP over Gnutella for example. Telling customers which protocol is more important to their network is discriminatory. So if I wanted to develop a completely legal and exclusively p2p network over the DSL lines I would be SOL here for any type of consistent service I could offer my customers)
c) Shaping isn't done to game the economics of the monopoly infrastructure (i.e. continually throttling services more and more to prevent needed infrastructure improvements)
d) Shaping is done in the fairest possible manner (related to points a, b, and but there are an infinite number of other variables to consider)
Of course it can be argued that shaping isn't needed at all, and that ISPs shouldn't sell more bandwidth than they are able to produce. This is especially true for corporations who have the infrastructure monopoly. If ISPs wholesale a certain amount of bandwidth then their customers should get what they pay for. There should be choice here and it should be reasonable. I'm not seeing any choice here nor any reasonableness.
No, it's recognized that they need to break up monopolies abusing their powers to prevent competition from being established or surviving. Monopolies that exist because no other competitors are willing or able, absent market manipulation by the company with the monopoly, to enter the market are okay.
These are rare, however, they exist.
Awesome! Even more choices for us, users! //Sarcasm off
...without actually reading the contracts. No doubt there is some sort of service level agreement in place, but I remember seeing agreements for these sort of things (well, sort of--commercial internet connectivity and colocation agreements) make statements about uptime--you get reimbursed if there are 'x' minutes of outage. However if there are any throughput or bandwidth statements they are quite a lot of weasel statements about numbers indicating maximums, not typical, etc. If your speed slows to dial-up it may not count as an outage against the SLA clauses.
This is also NOT an "anti-net-neutrality" court ruling. Bell was practicing traffic shaping on its own Sympatico ISP service even before it started doing the same for its "wholesale" customers, and for a time it was actually giving PREFERENTIAL treatment to its own competitors over the same infrastructure!
Net-neutrality is treating all traffic from all sources the same. Bell is apparently doing this right now--throttling all traffic in the same manner. Had there been evidence that Bell was using traffic shaping to give its own services superior performance to those ISPs who resell services over the very same infrastructure then Bell would rightfully be in great big trouble--especially since in many markets the only way ISPs can provide DSL service is to use Bell's lines for "last mile" connectivity.
At this level, under this situation, it is not appropriate for the government to interfere. Rather, the CRTC should be fostering competition at the infrastructure level. There have been first steps made at the wireless level in terms of securing access to existing cellular infrastructure as well as holding public RF auctions.
It is challenging to provide a choice when dealing with who owns the buried cable, so we have to make sure there is fair access to those lines. I don't see Bell doing anything unfair here. Stupid and anti-consumer, perhaps, but not anti-competitive. Bell's internet service is already notoriously inferior to all other major ISPs by reputation. If service continues to deteriorate because Bell elects to shape traffic over investing in its infrastructure then there is basis for another complaint to CRTC (since Bell is a monopoly for many markets insofar as telephone line connectivity--still an essential service). However this particular case is not the place to look at the traffic shaping issue.
In the history of its existence, the CRTC has never once missed an opportunity to prove it's composed of a bunch of fat-assed, conscienceless douchebags who unfailingly screw the Canadian citizens they're supposed to protect. I'd say I wished the whole crooked, honourless pack of pricks would die of cancer, but there's some things not even a disease should have to do.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
...should (b), (c), and (d) all be negated from what you said? Because I would think that non-discriminatory shaping, non-gaming shaping, and fair shaping would be good things, not problems. :)
Benford's Corollary to Clarke's Law: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
I'd be out of a job.
>>>It's recognized by even the most free market-fanatic economists that the government has a responsibility to break up monopolies.
>>>
If the monopoly was CREATED by the government, then yes. But in a truly free market a monopoly only exists for a short time, because new companies or technologies introduce alternatives. Like when MP3s replaced the CD monopoly. Or when Satellite services, or Verizon FiOS, or internet websites provided cheaper, better alternatives to the Comcast television monopoly.
"Free market fanatics" don't think the government needs to do anything, because competitors rise up and break-up the monopoly.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
The full decision
In case anyone wanted to read through it. I didn't see a link from TFA.
Phone companies monitor their networks, and may monitor calls carried on their network - it is their network
They may incidentally monitor phone calls as a part of normal operations (the lineman plugs into your pair while troubleshooting a problem somewhere) but they don't have the right to just monitor your line for the hell of it.
and you give up your right to privacy (at least privacy from the phone company)
Says who?
I hate to side with telecoms on anything, but in this case I think I need to - as long as people sign up to use a service on company X's network, company X can do whatever they want with the packets that find their way on to the network
I disagree. We've given the telecom industry billions of dollars in tax breaks and preferential treatment (codified monopolies, rights of way, etc) to assist them in building their networks. We have the right to have some say in how they manage those networks. If they want a true free market system then let's bring it on -- I'd love to be able to negotiate with the telephone company for royalties on that pole they put on my property.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Well the phone companies didn't prevent anybody running new copper to each house, but they were still instructed to allow other companies to use their lines. Sometimes there is more to it than pure competition.
This statement is blatantly false, not "insightful". First, the responsibilities of governments are a political matter, not an economic one. Second, plenty of economists consider aggressive monopoly-busting to be a net loss rather than any sort of public good. Inform yourself.
Anyway, if the government really had a responsibility to "break up monopolies" it would have to start with itself, as government -- in all its forms -- is the biggest and most destructive monopoly in existence.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Prince Edward Island, a province of Canada, has limitations on the area of land owned modulo activities carried out on that land (farming, leasing, e.g.).
Apparently so. But PEI != the rest of the world. Ted Turner owns nearly two million acres.
This is the Canadian regulatory body that is apparently mandated to providing Bell Canada, Rogers Communications, Shaw Cable, Quebecor, and Telus with their regional monopolies. It would be nice to see how often "representatives" of these companies take the CRTC commissioners, directors, and chair "out to lunch".
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Cell phone companies in Canada are required to have what's called a "materially adverse" clause in their contracts. This basically gives you the right to cancel your contract if they make any changes to it which are "materially adverse", usually things like adding fees or increasing the price of a service you're receiving. But you have to be fast, most of the time you have only 14 days to cancel after the change was made (which means if you don't notice the change until the next bill comes in you're hooped).
If you notice it in time and want out just call their customer service line, ask them if the changes affect you and, if so, read them the materially adverse clause and tell them you want out. When the front line CSR tells you you'll have to pay a fee just escalate the call to his supervisor.
'Course the grass isn't always greener on the other side, especially in the telecom industry.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
Al of your concerns can be negated if you get what you pay for in the first place. In other words, they shouldn't be able to shape your traffic if it falls within what they represented when selling your service or agreeing to sell someone else their connections to be resold later.
Suppose you take out internet service with a 3 meg connection, ok, we all know that some connections are faster then the 3 megs they told you, so it wouldn't matter if you saturates that 3 megs with sql or some gaming traffic or some Voip traffic, as long as you get the 3 megs you paid for. If you want to shape your traffic so that your SQL traffic only uses 80% of your bandwidth and you can still surf the interweb, then fine, that's on you. The ISP and telco don't need to worry about anything until it goes past that 3 meg mark then they can shape all they want. Now suppose there is a peering agreement between your ISP's network and my ISP's network, I have a 2 meg connection, My ISP limits your 3 meg traffic to my connection to my 2 meg connection that I am paying for and I get what I paid for. Nothing is preventing anyone from getting what they paid for. The shaping in that case would be discriminatory too because it would be effecting only me and my connection.
This is what the FCC chairman said about net neutrality, as long as the consumers get what they pay for, they can do anything they want. But the reality of what that means is that Goolge doesn't want to pay them, they can only limit the speeds to that of your connection regardless of is the traffic is legal or not. This same principle applies to your connection, if you pay for X speeds, even if they "don't guarantee the speed", the ISP can't intentionally limit the traffic to less then that but that wouldn't mean they couldn't or shouldn't limit the traffic at all.
I use traffic shaping at a site I manage because I don't want 30 computers hogging all the bandwidth when two poorly developed applications decide to update at once and saturate the T1 lines to the ISP. No, you can't change when they update, just whether they do or not and you can't change where they update from in some attempt to put a local cache into play. Well, you can but not without creating other problems with them that cascade into massive headaches. But in my usage, I'm doing it to make sure that what we pay for is availible for other uses. If the ISP did it, our connection would still be maxed and nothing else productive could be done. But it doesn't matter what the ISP thinks, if they sold me the speed, they need to deliver it.
On a side note, I typically have commercial accounts which do get performance guarantees but the principle is the same, if something happens outside their control, they aren't taking something from you, if they are shaping the traffic and not providing you with what they are selling you, then they are committing fraud. if they only worry about traffic above your stated speeds, then they are protecting their networks while not screwing you in the process. I think the entire argument about traffic shaping and net neutrality has been framed wrong because it is a useful tool and in some cases needs to be used, it's just that in current implementations and what companies are purposing ends up meaning that they are cheating people out of what they sold them. As long as that doesn't happen, fine, when it does, stop them. But claiming that any is bad will always get complaints rejected.
I have yet to see a service contract with a telco, or ISP that doesn't reserve them the right to change the service contract on the fly without notifying you.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
It's recognized by even the most free market-fanatic economists that the government has a responsibility to break up monopolies.
Well, in this case, since the government GAVE the company an EXCLUSIVE right to use the public right-of-ways, then they have every right to tell them what to do.
If the company doesn't like it, they can either stop using the public right-of-ways, or they can start sharing the right of ways.
Let me put it another way:
Let's say you have a delivery company in town, but they have a contract with the city which states that they are the ONLY company allowed to use the public streets to make deliveries.
Now how can anyone else compete? They can't- they have to ship their product to the edge of the city, and then pay the monopoly to carry the goods over the public roads... or find a way to deliver without using roads (good luck).
Since the government granted them the exclusive right, and restricted the rights of everyone else, they now have a duty to ensure that the company they are in bed with is fair about making the deliveries from other companies.
If every ISP had the same access to the home customers, and the playing field was truly level, then no, the government should stay out of it. But by picking a buddy to cuddle up next to in bed, they have taken on the responsibility to regulate what their partner does.
I disagree. We've given the telecom industry billions of dollars in tax breaks and preferential treatment (codified monopolies, rights of way, etc) to assist them in building their networks. We have the right to have some say in how they manage those networks. If they want a true free market system then let's bring it on -- I'd love to be able to negotiate with the telephone company for royalties on that pole they put on my property.
And that's the piece that the GP was missing. While I completely agree with the GP when it comes to private businesses and networks, the situation involving telephone lines, cable lines, power lines, etc is not by any means private. The have received incentives (tax breaks, direct money, exclusivity rights, etc.) and right of ways to build out their networks, giving us a distinct interest in how they handle them.
"If the monopoly was CREATED by the government, then yes. But in a truly free market a monopoly only exists for a short time, because new companies or technologies introduce alternatives."
You're assuming that the incumbent monopoly just sits around waiting to get killed. It isn't the case, and if the monopoly (who should be very profit rich with no competition) can choke profits into the red for long enough to kill any sort of upstart competition, there's very little to stop them from retaining control.
Mind you, a monopoly (besides those created by gov.) are extremely rare, so what normally shakes out in modern economics is a series of oligopolies like Operating systems, Web browsers, or Long distance providers. You can enter the market, but you better have something very attractive to offer in order to survive the incumbents.
Bye!
Anything you do on anyone else's property loses the expectation of privacy. The phone network is, legally, the phone company's property. The ISP's network is, legally, the ISP's property.
While I agree with you that perhaps the telecoms shouldn't actually own the networks since taxpayers helped build them, legally they do, so whatever happens on their network is theirs.
I'm not trying to say I think telecoms should be allowed to do whatever they want, I'm only trying to point out that saying "I should be allowed privacy" is not going to get anyone a victory in court, since legally there is no expectation or indication of privacy from the network owner, and that legally they can do pretty much whatever they want to the packets on their network (assuming no breach of contract or misrepresentation of services has occurred).
What this means is two things. First, that the law needs to be changed. Second, that the method of attack on the current law must be based on something other than privacy. I believe I mentioned what that attack vector could be: "The service agreement as signed implied impartial packet routing and transmission, but they're not doing that."
Disclaimer: IANAL, but I like to pretend I am ;)
Ok, allow me to clarify: According to my networking class at the university, phone systems are designed to do what I described earlier. Individual phone systems may not actually be implemented that way, but they were originally designed that way.
Oh, also, the wiki article you link to specifically says that most telephone systems in the world pass along all the bits in the sample, so I'm not wrong for most of the world ;)
We switched all our services from Telus to another ISP, using Telus's lines. Our switch date came along, and then our Internet connection went dead. Neither new modem or old modem worked for anything. All it could do was Ping Telus servers. It took a month and a half of us badgering both tech support lines in order to make it right. As far as I'm concerned Telus has a policy to make it as difficult as possible to switch to another provider. Now that I've switched I'm never going back.
You have a very valid point. What that means, though, is that we (as customers) need to do one of two things (or both):
1) Refuse to sign any service contract containing that clause.
2) Make it illegal (through legislation) to include that clause in service contracts.
Anything you do on anyone else's property loses the expectation of privacy
I think you are completely mistaken. Hotels don't have the right to put cameras in their rooms and videotape the guests in the shower. My landlord doesn't have the right to come into my apartment whenever he wants without notice. And I'd still maintain that the phone company can't monitor my phone calls or packets just for the hell of it.
Disclaimer: IANAL, but I like to pretend I am ;)
Are there any real lawyers that would care to comment?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the bill of rights entitle every Canadian to freedom of speech? And what Bell is doing is limiting peoples access to communication resources, therefor limiting peoples freedom of speech. Man, the CRTC is so bias, and utterly useless! They have never seemed to care...
Take the phone. Remove the Battery. Place the phone on the ground. Smash it into several dozen splintered pieces with a large hammer. Go to town and purchase a new phone, and a new connection from a different mobile provider. This will cost you slightly more money, but not a penny of that will be going to Bell. If they continue to charge your credit card or bank account, close the account and get another one.
This will all cause some inconvenience. But this is a small price to pay for your dignity.
May the Maths Be with you!
since legally there is no expectation or indication of privacy from the network owner, and that legally they can do pretty much whatever they want to the packets on their network (assuming no breach of contract or misrepresentation of services has occurred).
Since you appear to know the law, it would be helpful if you gave a reference to any evidence you have to this statement. In Canada our privacy laws have always been rather strict (as compared to the US for example). I personally doubt that phone companies can listen to phone calls or Internet sessions at their whim. However if you provide some evidence to this it may change my perceptions (and I'm talking about actual laws or legal precedents and not just possibly illegal EULAs or inadvertent listening do to maintenance work).
Perhaps I should clarify: Anything you do on anyone else's property loses the expectation of privacy, except as specified by law or contractual agreements.
There are no laws prohibiting phone companies or ISPs from monitoring the content passing through their networks, and their contracts do not restrict such activity. While it may be a morally questionable activity (and I agree with you that they shouldn't do it), it's not illegal - if it were, ISPs would have been sued for it a long time ago.
Again, just to clarify, I'm not trying to say you're wrong as far as ethics go - I'm trying to say you're wrong about the (il)legality of ISPs looking at packets and telcos monitoring phone calls.
read through those charges. When I was with bellsouth (landline), they used to like to sneak in extra services while I wasn't looking.
Also, when I asked them to explain all the fees, some of those "FCC mandate" items aren't end-user taxes at all. They're just sneaking things that are part of the normal cost of doing business as "extras" to avoid folding them into their regular price. Somehow this is legal.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
"In response to the government's policy direction, we have launched a new market-oriented approach to telecom regulation. We are giving priority to market forces, and we will intervene only when market failure makes it necessary."
- Konrad von Finckenstein, head of the CRTC, June 17, 2008 speech in Toronto
Translation: companies - do whatever the hell you want. And customers - fuck you.
Sign me up on the "Abolish CRTC" campaign.
Before the American civil war every company had to get a license from the government simply to exist, and then it was only for a specific limited length of time and for a single purpose: like building a bridge or canel, etc. Companies have more power today than they ever have. Thinking that the government does not have a responsibility to break up monopolies is a crazy, anarchistic idea.
Well if it is good enough for the CRTC then its good enough for me! :)
In all seriousness though, thanks for the post, as title and blurb were very misleading and everyone seemed to buy that and just go with it.
It will be interesting to see what happens in July.
Thought I imagine a funny response from the decision as in "we are dismissing the allegations as it was discovered you treat your own customers just as horribly. You are fair in that you treat everyone equally horribly." lol.
I really hope the CRTC renders a fair decision (one way or the other). Personally Bell really irks me.
Someone previous mentioned that the CRTC was made up of industry and lobbies, and thus would always rule with the telcos. I hope this isn't the case. The fact is those people are the most knowledgeable in the field, so it makes sense to have them make these decisions, it is a balance. I only hope they are not being influenced by their past connections or bias.
If CRTC does decide against Bell I hope they will take it one step further and make the same decision against Rogers Communication (Cable Monopoly). I think we need some real telecommunication reform in Canada, and this might be a first (small) step. We should be world leaders and innovators in telecommunication, but due to how we are organized I feel we are stagnant and restrictive (protectionist due to duopoly).
b) Shaping isn't done discriminately (i.e. favouring one protocol over another, like VOIP over Gnutella for example. Telling customers which protocol is more important to their network is discriminatory.
I don't think that's what people are up in arms about. Traffic shaping by protocol is legitimate. I think it's more like Bell is shaping traffic so that Bell's VOIP packets are favoured over MomPopCo's VOIP packets.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Yes. In the United States, they were granted a monopoly over the telephone industry by the government because telephone was considered an essential part of the infrastructure, but as part of that deal, they had to let competitors use their copper (which was laid with some public funding and the legal monopoly status and thus had already paid for itself many times over). That's part of what the Bell System Divestiture was all about.
If you are in Ontario (I haven't research other jurisdictions) you are free of any contract you may have had with Telus.
Changing the prices definitely constitutes a material change.
http://www.e-laws.gov.on.ca/html/statutes/english/elaws_statutes_02c30_e.htm
That info is a little out of date, too. At least to the endpoint, PRI is the preferred method of attaching to the PSTN. You do give up one of the channels to be dedicated to signaling, but get vastly superior channel allocation.
I'm not sure what the telcos are using for the big trunks, but I'd imagine (hope) they have something a little more advanced than basic T1 by now.
IANAL, but here's what I've found that may help you:
Employers may monitor employees' phone calls and location (using cell towers or GPS).
(from the same link) Cell phone companies are required by the FCC to have the ability to track your location to within 100 meters for the purposes of 911 calls.
From this page: Telephone company employees may listen to your conversations when it is necessary to provide you with service, to inspect the telephone system, to monitor the quality of telephone service or to protect against service theft or harassment. Also, employers may monitor and even record their employees' phone conversations with few restrictions (18 USC 2511(2)(a); California Penal Code 631(b)).
Note that the above paragraph gives telephone companies free license to listen to phone conversations, they simply need to do it under the premise of "monitoring the quality of service".
I don't think there are any laws regulating ISPs inspecting customers' packets; if there were, we wouldn't be having the trouble we have now with companies doing it; for example, Comcast not only used Sandvine to do DPI, they actively interfered with connections, and lied to customers about it - but none of that was illegal.
I would direct you to look at 18 USC 119 section 2511, in particular sections 2(a)(i) and 3
To quote:
"...a provider of wire communication service to the public shall not utilize service observing or random monitoring except for mechanical or service quality control checks."
"...a person or entity providing an electronic communication service to the public shall not intentionally divulge the contents of any communication (other than one to such person or entity, or an agent thereof) while in transmission on that service to any person or entity other than an addressee or intended recipient of such communication or an agent of such addressee or intended recipient. "
It is not legal for the phone company to listen in on your calls. It is also not legal for them to record them. Think of what it would mean if they were allowed to - business over the phone would be a problem for a start.
Bit-robbing is a bad example as it steals the LSB from every channel at a constant interval. It doesn't pick and choose which ones to reduce the bit-rate on.
Employers may monitor employees' phone calls [privacyrights.org] and location [privacyrights.org] (using cell towers or GPS).
I'm talking about telcos here and not employee/employer relationships.
Cell phone companies are required by the FCC to have the ability to track your location to within 100 meters for the purposes of 911 calls.
Not really relevant to what I was asking.
Telephone company employees may listen to your conversations when it is necessary to provide you with service, to inspect the telephone system, to monitor the quality of telephone service or to protect against service theft or harassment.
That's what I already presumed and stated in my earlier comment; as I've stated I was more interested in knowing whether the telco had unlimited access and liability to listen in whenever they wanted (as was your original statement of facts).
Note that the above paragraph gives telephone companies free license to listen to phone conversations
That's your interpretation. As I've stated I was looking for specific laws or precedent and not legally dubious loop-holes.
Unfortunately all of your examples and references refer to the USA; I was specifically talking about and mentioned Canada and it's much stricter privacy laws. I will give you kudos for going out of the way to do some research however. It does appear to me that your initial statements are actually just dubious assumptions.
Best regards,
UTW
They're allowed to, as long as they claim it's for "quality control checks". Seriously, if the telco says it's for quality control checks, you cannot prove them wrong. Thus, they effectively have free license to listen to calls.
The second snippet only says they can't give the contents of the communication to anyone except the parties involved. The telecommunication company is implicitly an involved party (by actually transmitting the communication).
How does turning on torrent encryption affect this?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
--I'd love to be able to negotiate with the telephone company for royalties on that pole they put on my property.--
Well in the US, normally that would be an easement negotiated way before you were born to bring power to someones home. Then the telcos, cable company, have to be granted fair use of that pole too but they have to pay the power company for that right.
I don't think that there is anything to stop you from building your own network and putting it right under theirs unless the local government made some kind of exclusive deal, which I would think they could pass a law and change that if you want.
That used to be the law. Maybe it has changed.
Most of the time it doesn't work because getting it to work well costs much more than just installing more bandwidth. However, in some special circumstances it can be very useful. Typical examples are mobile radio links where adequate over-provisioning is very difficult and there are just a few subscribers.
A typical good usage is that if you run a home web server you shape your traffic down just a little and leave a little overhead for your upgoing ack packets. The alternative is to actively give your ack packets priority, but that means that your ongoing uplink traffic may actually lose a packet (which has the send buffer completely full because it's not shaped) and become slower overall than it would be if you shaped it.
Another option might be to use RED to keep the buffers low anyway, but that would lead to a chance of dropping the odd ACK packet which is always a bad idea.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
"Why don't you cancel it? We can in the country that you're not talking about..."
If we could cancel it, we probably wouldn't be complaining, but there's a cancellation fee that makes it slightly less painful to just ride out the bull.
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
What right does the government have to tell a company what to do with it's own property?
It's not 'the company's own property' though. The fact is that Bell was given 100's of millions in taxpayer dollars to build out infrastructure over the decades. This also applies to the US, where in the past 15 years or so the telcos were given some $200 billion in cash and tax cuts as an incentive to build out infrastructure. They sat on those incentives for YEARS. Why do you think google's snapping up all that dark fiber, while only some people are getting FIOS and DocSIS? In the case of Canada, the 3rd party wholesalers only need the 'last mile' from Bell, but almost every time they try to put in their own DSLAMs etc, Bell denies them. All of this is pretty well documented at DSLreports. If you think that the 'company' should get to own the infrastructure, maybe you should also be demanding that they pay back all the incentives and cash they were given to build 'their' property. http://www.rgbfilter.com/?p=237
Yes, it is my interpretation, but chances are if it can be interpreted that way, it can be used that way in a court.
Remember, if a telco is caught snooping on customer calls, they're not going to say "oops, I guess that was illegal", they're going to point to the law and say "see, if you interpret it this way, what we did is legal". Or in the more likely case, they already know the law, so whatever they do they could simply say "it's for quality monitoring." Yes, I realize that's a loophole - but loopholes are extremely important to take note of in the legal world.
My original statement still stands, though; all a telco has to do is say "we're monitoring call X for quality control purposes", and they can monitor whatever call they want. All an ISP has to do is say "we're monitoring connection X for quality control purposes". They can't give the call or data to anyone, but that wasn't my original point - my original point was that legally they can listen/monitor.
I didn't realize you were asking about Canada, though. The way I understood your post I thought you were asking about the US; I assumed you already knew Canada's law on the topic and were thus interested in comparing it to US law.
And our freedom of speech is limited compared to our US cousins.
You haven't been to the States recently, I take it.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I can monopoloze a service, contract with you to provide said service wholesale, then right in the middle of the contract completely change the terms and that's okay in Canada???!!!
Of course, I did get slapped. I was told that the next time I pull this shit, I have to give you 30 days notice that I'm changing the terms of the contract in mid stream.
I guess this means that contracts aren't worth the paper they're printed on in Canada!
I think there is a class action suit taking place against Bell and Telus over the text messaging on those very grounds.
If you were referring to Telus changing their billing practices from "we bill you for what you used last month" to "we're billing you in advance for next month's service," I didn't have a contract to break. And that's a good point to raise. We signed for two years, which expired last year. I really should have looked at my options then. Any incentives you get in these deals are usually at the front end. Bell gave us the first two months free, then six months at 29.00. After that we pay 50.00, unless we subscribe to one of their cable packages. If we do that, we get the service for $42.00/month, which is $3.00 more than Telus was charging us for far inferior service. And we can cancel at any time.
Like I said, Telus did us a real favour by pissing me off enough to check out the competition.
I don't care why you're posting AC
Yeah, they probably want to make it formal ruling that anything 'good ole' Bell does is fine. I do not remember ANY recent decisions from the CRTC that I thought were in the best interests of Canadians. Though seriously, I urge other fellow Canadians to write the CRTC expressing your views on this and also write your local MP about it too.
They're allowed to, as long as they claim it's for "quality control checks". Seriously, if the telco says it's for quality control checks, you cannot prove them wrong. Thus, they effectively have free license to listen to calls.
The second snippet only says they can't give the contents of the communication to anyone except the parties involved. The telecommunication company is implicitly an involved party (by actually transmitting the communication).
Dude, your grasping at straws. That statute he quoted seems pretty straightforward.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I may be paranoid but I think the real reason for this technology is to "shape" VOIP and related services to thwart the competition. I don't think this is about limiting download volumes at all. Most of us don't use even close to what the lines can carry and who cares if the download speeds are "lumpy".
However, consider that if we have a high speed line then all telecommunication services including what is now done on phone lines and our television services can run over the same link instead of three separate lines each being billed by possibly separate organizations.
No longer will we need cable TV or satellite TV service siting right beside an old POTS (plain old telephone service) line sitting right beside a hopefully brand spanking new fiber optic cable.
Without shaping the ISP and others can run whatever communications services they wish over a fast smooth high speed link. As I see it, this is a preemptive strike. Better to get the "shaping" technology into place before the masses figure out how badly they get screwed. If the carrier can make the communications link "lumpy" then VOIP services and Television services might not run so smoothly unless offered by guess who is "shaping" the line.
We can already use say an Asterisk server to provide PBX services but this is only if we can be sure the time delay between packet transmission is small and predictable. Think of how much competition this technology can create for the phone company! http://www.asterisk.org/
Another thing to consider is the profit margins on cell phone services. Once we have the digital link in place then we can run these services over wifi if we wish. Many libraries, some coffee shops and even city hall in some locations offer wifi for free. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotspot_(Wi-Fi) Again "shaping" can be used to detune the system. Its probably a stop gap attempt but I'm paranoid enough to expect them to try it.
Newsflash:
Within the next few weeks, Bell will ask the CRTC to allow it to have any other company to use it's facilities throughout it's territory (which never has been the whole Canada).
In essence, Bell will wholesell it's facilities to any Dick, Tom and Harry that wants to provide any service Bell currently offers, including ADSL.
The rationale is "why bother with collecting from a zillion private accounts, when you can sell wholesale service to, say, 50 retailers who then will be stuck with collecting those zillion consumer accounts and doing the customer service?". Much better to deal with 50 wholesalers than a zillion consumers... And at least, this way, it can keep a piece of the action; when it'll lose a consumer, it'll still get the wholesale fee...
(This information comes directly from a small telecom CEO who won't need anymore to install his own equipment in Bell's COs to offer good service).
Et, hate to do a little nitpick here, but no US law has any jurisdiction in Canada whatsoever.
They're allowed to, as long as they claim it's for "quality control checks". Seriously, if the telco says it's for quality control checks, you cannot prove them wrong. Thus, they effectively have free license to listen to calls.
Of course you can. If they've been doing "routine maintenance" that requires listening in to my conversations for the last week I don't think anyone would believe them.
And that's beside the point - you said it was legal, not that it was "illegal but if you're super sneaky no one notices".
The second snippet only says they can't give the contents of the communication to anyone except the parties involved. The telecommunication company is implicitly an involved party (by actually transmitting the communication).
No it doesn't. If it said 'the parties involved' you might have a point, but it says "other than an addressee or intended recipient". Unless you're trying to phone your Grandmother and the phone company that seems pretty cut and dry.
Whoever told you this, lied. Prior to the Civil War most people operated private businesses. They owned printing presses, shoe-making shops, clothing shops, and any other item people might need. Even the family farm was a kind of business (grow food - sell it to the townies or city-dwellers). The plantation was the ultimate business, shipping either cotton or tobacco all around the world. One enterprising American even started an ice business where he shipped ice from the north pole into the States so people could keep their stored food chilled.
They did NOT need to get a license to operate these shops or businesses - they simply opened them up and started selling.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
By that reasoning the government has a right to invade your private home where you've been selling games/videos/whatever on Ebay, because you're operating a company. Small, yes, but still business in action.
You might want to rethink your position.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
I'm going to bitch like hell about this month's bill, though
Bitch? What about not paying that part of the bill about which there is a dispute?
All around me, I hear consumers complain about this or that bill. The funny thing is that I've got customers myself who happily don't pay me when my business is not treating them right.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
No, it's recognized that they need to break up monopolies abusing their powers to prevent competition from being established or surviving. Monopolies that exist because no other competitors are willing or able, absent market manipulation by the company with the monopoly, to enter the market are okay.
These are rare, however, they exist.
This is exactly what they are doing though.
The case was not about bell canada's own end customers being throttled, it was about canadian "CLECS" who leased lines fro them being throttled in order to prevent them offering better service to their customers than bell.
Bell is messing with their service against their will, and not providing the service they sold to them.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
What right does the government have to tell a company what to do with it's own property?
Most colleges now incorporate at least 30% of their study materials online.
Almost every major institution now charges substantial fees to
those who refuse to interact with them through their websites.
Finally, and most importantly, in my job search i've found most companies require you submit your material exclusively online.
Given that you must now have internet access to get any job over minimum wage, Internet service is a utility.
the property rights of private stakeholders are supposed to take a back seat to the public welfare in the case of utlities.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Brilliant. Thank you very much.
I'm going to look this up, as I can use this against a couple of companies that have pissed me off, lately.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
It is your fault for maxing out your dl/ul speeds for prolonged periods.
What is my fault, if I purchase a 3 meg connection, then I should have a 3 meg connection period. Otherwise don't represent what your selling me as a 3 meg connection. That where the fairness of the contract comes into play.
You aren't paying for a 3meg line, you're paying for a line that can go UP TO 3megs. If every single internet connection was always working at full speed, the internet in the US would crash within 2seconds.
Lol.. Only because they over subscribe their service. Anyways, them selling the 3 meg line means that if the speed reduction is because they limit the speed, they are ripping me off.
Look at it this way, If you contract with me to mow your lawn and keep it trimmed for $60 a month and I skip two months but still collect, have I ripped you off? Let's put this a little more clearer with a Slashdot style car analogy, If I say I will take you to your appointment in some other town for the cost of lunch and a full tank of gas, then decide to park the car and fuck off after you filled the tank and paid for my lunch, making you late for your appointment, have I done what I advertised when you miss your appointment? If traffic makes up late, I made an effort to fulfill my obligation, if I purposely delay the trip, I violated our contract.
The ISP have so much bandwidth, they are connected to another network that has so much and limits the first according to what they pay or because of technical restrictions. When they sell a 3 meg connection and then purposely don't deliver it because of something they purposely do, then they are committing a fraud on the public. You can attempt to justify it all you want, all that means is that they have to represent what they are selling differently. If they aren't willing to do that, it is misrepresentation and fraud and the public, whether a private individual or a contracting company deserves to have what they are purchasing to be accurately represented at the time of purchase as well as when the service is advertised. Likewise, if your an ISP reseller and you contract a 45 meg connection to bell Canada's internet backbone network and your not reaching that 45 meg, when they restrict your traffic, they are committing a fraud in their contract and advertising. The government has every right to ensure the contracts and commerce going on under it's system isn't fraudulent.
If ou had a clue as to how cable internet works, you would know that current protocols max out at 100MBps over a single line, so no it's not over subscribing, it's the fact that unless you live next door to a hub, you cannot possibly get the full 3-4MBps access.
If you had a clue, you would know that the problem isn't limits with the technology or even knowing that the limits are there. It is the cable ISP claiming you will have this speed and you not getting it not because the Docis9 system can only handle 100 megs on the bus with TV channels to the hub but because the cable company is purposely limiting your connection to speeds below what they advertised.
I'm fully aware of the problems they face. I'm also fully aware that also advertise speeds up to 3 or 6 or 10 meg or whatever. But they aren't giving you the opportunity for those speeds when they limit your connections with traffic shaping software to 2 megs now are they? How can you have speed up to something if they limit it to below what you were promised? Truth in advertising and making sure the customer gets what they paid for is what's at stake here, not the cable company's need to limit their customer's access because they over sold the availible bandwidth. That's all find and dandy but when they purposely limit your connection to a slower speed, they aren't delivering what they sold you, they aren't even making a best effort attempt, they are purposely not delivering what they sold you.
Seriously, think about this, if the ISP (cable, DSL, T1 or anything) os planning on limiting my access to 1 or 2 megs so they can sell the service to more people but advertise and tell me they are selling me a 3 or 5 meg connection, am I getting what I am paying for? IS there deceit somewhere in that? Sure there is, they never planned on giving me the 3 or 5 meg connection, they planned on limiting me before I even signed up. I can't take a car and sell it to 10 different people at full price and without each others knowledge and then sneak behind their backs and take it to let the others use while complaining about some technical issue can I? I don't see why the cable companies or the ISP's should be able to do the same. If they didn't intend to allow it in the first place, they should never advertise a price based on it.
they do have that right