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Canada Rules To Uphold Net Neutrality (www.cbc.ca)
According to a new ruling by Canada's telecommunications regulator, internet service providers should not be able to exempt certain types of content, such as streaming music or video, from counting toward a person's data cap. The ruling upholds net neutrality, which is the principle that all web services should be treated equally by providers. CBC.ca reports: "Rather than offering its subscribers selected content at different data usage prices, Internet service providers should be offering more data at lower prices," said Jean-Pierre Blais, chairman of the CRTC in a statement. "That way, subscribers can choose for themselves what content they want to consume." The decision stems from a 2015 complaint against the wireless carrier Videotron, which primarily operates in Quebec. Videotron launched a feature in August of that year, enabling customers to stream music from services such as Spotify and Google Play Music without it counting against a monthly data cap as a way to entice people to subscribe to Videotron's internet service. The decision means that Videotron cannot offer its unlimited music streaming plan to subscribers in its current form -- nor can other internet providers offer similar plans that zero-rate other types of internet content, such as video streaming or social media.
"The ruling upholds net neutrality, which is the principle that all web services should be treated equally by providers"
No. That's not net neutrality. If you think all "web services" can be treated equally then you either know fuck all about network engineering, or you're a fucking idiot.
Instead of defining it as net neutrality, define minimum bandwidth HIGHER than people need for video, audio and FASTER than gamers need.
So a company sells a broadband service, it has to be ABOVE these limits.
It's not whether they're slowing down YouTube or Netflix vs Facebook if Facebook paid them, any broadband service should be able to deliver a YouTube stream, a Netflix stream AND a Facebook stream solidly. Whether they ship Netflix twice as fast is irrelevent, as long a the viewer on the end see it as a smooth playback.
these ISps charging $78 a month for ridiculous slow internet speed. Sure speedtest shows 20MBS+ down everytime, netflix and voip works fine, but browsing the internet is slower that 1995. cnn.com takes 10-14 seconds to render and another 15 seconds for all the spyware components to finish on a fully patched acer chromebook
fuck USA internet monopoly, i'm going back to netzero
How about just get rid of data caps. My300/100 connection is uncapped with Bell. Why can't it be that way everywhere in Canada?
so if you have iptv from bell it will kill your cap? just from there TV system being on?
decent
No, because the IPTV is an Intranet service, on the ISP-local network, not an Internet service, hosted on the wider internet. So when you access your Bell IPTV, it doesn't go to the internet and doesn't add to your internet usage.
Or move there. The difference is starting to move into the embarrassing zone. Check your kevlar vest at the border, and oh, if you forgot to buy your travel medical it won't cost you $30k to get back home if you happen to break your leg running away from a moose.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
They pluck the low-hanging fruit. A quote from their own website... https://www.beanfield.com/resi...
> Beanfield is condos. We are primarily focused on servicing condominiums
> in high density areas at the moment. We are working as fast as
> we can to hook up as many buildings each month as possible.
The concept works great in downtown Toronto in a highrise condo. An average residence... not so much.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
The core of your argument is that the ISP can provide less of a service than they contracted to provide and thus have an artificial scarcity which they trade off between clients.
Streaming video for example, a Netflix HD stream is 5mbps. Are you seriously suggesting that a customer paying for a 20mbp or 50mbp connection is only able to get 5mbps if the ISP throttles others, who also paid for 20mbps or 50mbp??
The ISP should deliver the service they agreed to provide.
ISPs should stop trying to double sell both ends of the connection.
Oh, please give me an ISP that offers various 'uncapped' services depending on what the content providers pay/bribe.
Because that is so ripe for abuse. IP-over-dns was developed to take advantage of airport hotspots where you pay for access but dns is open even before payment - so you can reach their sign-up site. With ip-over-dns, you don't need to sign up. Not merely free, also anonymous!
IP tunnels can run over anything. Say they provide "free facebook" but cap everything else. So all I need, is a tunnel through facebook. Encode IP packages as text, post them on my account. At work there is no cap, so my work pc "reads" those posts, re-codes the ip packets and pass them on to the Internet proper. Return packets go the opposite way - work pc posts "replies" and my home pc reads them and interprets them.
I can then upgrade my debian server without hitting the cap. The FB account will accumulate 45GB of base64-encoded crap messages, but I don't care about facebook so no problem there. Similiar tricks can be pulled on twitter, online games, on netflix feedback pages or whatever.
In the beginning, this will be an expert's option. But if it works well, someone will make easy-to-use packages for the noobs. So go on. Give us uncapped exceptions to use in ways they never expected. It'll be fun, if nothing else.
This is the same argument videotron is using ... it's our OWN streaming service, from our OWN servers, over our OWN network. It really doesn't work well when the ISP is also the content provider (i.e. vertical integration).
As a counter argument to Bell, Zazeen is an IPTV provider and an independent ISP that uses Bell/Rogers last mile network. While Zazeen IPTV is their own service on their own network, because they are using the last mile they have to pay aggregate bandwidth usage costs to Bell (google Capacity Based Billing for more information). Because of this, they have to increase their prices to cover the extra CBB costs or have to downgrade the stream to lower the bandwidth consumption. Both of which Bell doesn't have to do with its preferential pricing, putting the independent operators at a disadvantage.
No, because the IPTV is an Intranet service, on the ISP-local network, not an Internet service, hosted on the wider internet. So when you access your Bell IPTV, it doesn't go to the internet and doesn't add to your internet usage.
Well, perhaps if Bell did peering better it wouldn't be less of a problem.
I work at an institution that connects to TorIX, the largest IXP in Canada. When I was on Bell's DSL, my packets would go to Chicago, then pop around a bit, re-enter Canada, then reach $WORK. Now that I'm with Teksavvy, my SSH packets go from TS, to TorIX, to $WORK. The number of hops is (at least) halved.
Google, Akami, Amazon, CloudFlare, Facebook, OVH, etc., are all at TorIX, so why is Bell going to Chicago (and the NSA's jurisdiction) to hit Canadian content?
* https://www.torix.ca/peers.php
How I read this.
The ISP's lobbied for the ability of data Caps, then they wanted to selectively take advantage of not using Caps for their own services for a competitive advantage for their own benefit... Live by the Cap, Die by the Cap I say! They want to have their cake and eat it...
For the most part, 2 or 3 companies own everything in the Canadian telecommunication world, so them doing this (other than international impacts) really is a more less level playing field between them. That said, there are other smaller players, that don't own the infrastructure, or multimedia conglomerates, and as such would be at a significant disadvantage.
As is they are all a bunch of crooked bastards really, and anything the CRTC can do to reign them in is a good thing. What was likely their business plan was to not use Caps to promote their services for *a time* and then at a certain point once they have built a customer base, they would change the terms of your agreement to make the data apply to your Cap again, it's what they do. They can't help it. It's like that parable about the scorpion hitching a ride on the back of a frog to cross the river, only to sting them halfway across, and when asked why they did it the answer is "I'm a scorpion"...
There are others, to be sure, but the fact that AT&T is building FirstNet as a dedicated network for law enforcement and "first responders" illustrates a fundamental flaw in net neutrality. Not all content is equally important.
ok?
This gets to be a tough subject. Where I live you have 3 options for TV service:
- Satellite (sucks once you get used to modern cable/iptv offerings)
- Cable from the cable company
- IPTV from the phone company
From an end user perspective, the Cable and IPTV offerings are identical, but behind the scenes they are very different, cable is it's own path and doesn't exist as an IP service on the customer's network, but IPTV does.
If you stop allowing zero rating of the IPTV service, you put the phone company at a major disadvantage to the cable company, and effectively kill that as a competitor in the marketplace. So right now the CRTC has taken the view that if a holder of a broadcast license is streaming that content on their own network they can consider it "equivalent" to the cable offering, and zero rate it, however if it's over someone else's network, or it's not content covered by the broadcast license, it can't be zero rated. (though interestingly enough the rulings so far have limited "their own network" to the wired network, zero rating it over a cell phone was deemed to violate net-neutrality, probably because that's not competing directly with cable on equal terms)
This is a reasonable compromise to keep IPTV as a competitor in the marketplace, while still enforcing net-neutrality.
Interesting that Facebook is lobbying FOR net neutrality in the US but argued AGAINST it in Canada. I guess they're sufficiently entrenched in zero-rating deals up north.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
This is the same argument videotron is using ... it's our OWN streaming service, from our OWN servers, over our OWN network. It really doesn't work well when the ISP is also the content provider (i.e. vertical integration).
Except it's not. From TFA (emphasis mine):
Videotron launched a feature in August of that year, enabling customers to stream music from services such as Spotify and Google Play Music without it counting against a monthly data cap
So, they're external services (Spotify and Google Play Music). If it was a internally hosted service, it wouldn't be an issue.
So in a US city you can get $37/month 250mb/s unlimited?
I believe the argument is Canada has pretty good plans. You can easily compare rural plans in both countries as well. I'd be surprised if the US has plans noticeably better than Canada. And looking at that site I wouldn't be surprised if they can't compete.