Bell Canada Decides To Throttle Traffic Without Telling Resellers
from the no-neutrality-for-you! dept
While it's increasingly rare to find DSL service not directly sold by the telco (thanks to the FCC killing line sharing rules, of course), in other countries, it's much more common. This creates competition on the network and gives the various retail sellers a chance to differentiate themselves. Up in Canada, it appears that Bell Canada has decided to start implementing traffic shaping features without letting its resellers know. That means that customers are discovering that their traffic is being impeded at times and their own ISP has no clue about it. And it's blocking perfectly legitimate activities. In fact, one person points out that he's having trouble downloading the show that the CBC is purposely offering on BitTorrent. This seems especially ridiculous, as Bell Canada is dealing with a small number of resellers and should be able to price its network in a manner that takes into account usage -- allowing the resellers to handle how they reprice and resell the service. But by unilaterally deciding to shape the traffic without even telling its ISP partners, it gets users pissed off at their own ISPs for something that has nothing to do with them. Then again, perhaps that's the idea.
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Shut up foo'! by Mr T on Mar 25th, 2008 @ 12:48am
As long as the throttling doesn't cause videos to skip, dunno what's wrong with it.
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What's wrong with throttling by ike on Mar 25th, 2008 @ 2:43am
Mr T: Throttling in of itself isn't bad, it's doing it secretly and in contradiction of rates promised by the packages the users pay for.
In this case, it's particularly bad since the company in question (Bell Canada, not an ISP, although it owns one) is throttling users of other companies, messing with their clients (the ISPs) and their clients' clients (DSL users).
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Bell Canada is evil by Shuryno on Mar 25th, 2008 @ 3:44am
And I'm not even refering directly to this event in particular. This company use to have a monopolistic situation and lost it. Their service is still modeled on a monopolistic situation and most people left the boat.
I guess a lot of their former client went with another DSL ISP not knowing Bell was still the one owning it all. I'm not really suprised, not at all. It's Bell and story involving Bell can turn into nightmare.
That's a big problem up here, the DSL architecture is owned by Bell and the cable architecture is owned by very few players.
No matter which ISP you choose, your bound to either one of them, but most peeps don't know this.
Did I mention Bell is evil? If you ever have a company, studying the Bell model is a sure way to learn what you shouln't be doing to keep your customer happy.
eh!
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Re: Shut up foo'! by Mr T on Mar 25th, 2008 @ 7:38am
Canadian telecos have long been strikingly anticompetitive in comparison to those stateside. My jaw dropped when I saw 3-year contracts for cell phones.
But it looks like T-Mobile is looking to possibly make a bid for 3G spectrum for a 2009 launch..?
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Not very Symaptico by Saliavte on Mar 25th, 2008 @ 8:37am
When I decided to move to Teksavvy for DSL I called Bell to cancel my service, they asked me why I was cancelling, throttling of course, they then offered me a 25% discount. I refused.
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Bell throttling independent ISP's by ut_ck on Mar 25th, 2008 @ 5:32pm
Well let me put it in terms that demonstrates just how wrong this is ....
First, Bell and Rogers the two major Internet Service Providers are also the two major entertainment proividers. That in itself is a conflict of interest .. let me tell you why...
Bell and Rogers both have strong vested interests in selling entertainment being DVD rental Expressvu (Pay per view). They are assuming that people who use the internet more specifically those who use torrents are downloading movies and entertainment. This cuts into their business and therefore, they control by "throttling" p2p and BT. They are under the impression that by doing this, they can sell the movies you have already paid 5 times to see can be sold to you again in high-definition for a 6th time. The films you are paying 34.99 to get on bluray cost about 12 cents to make because they were already filmed in high-def. You paid for that movie when you saw it at the theater, then when you bought the Beta tape .. yet again when you bought the VHS and then again when you rented it from Rogers and then perhaps watched it on Pay Per view and then ultimately decided to buy the DVD. Now they want to do it all over again ... yup they want you to dish out you hard earned cash to buy that movie again. How many times does someone have to buy that movie ? Can the industry be a little less greedy ... maybe ?
No , I think not ! Perhaps if they were a little more fair and stopped being so greedy people would stop downloading torrents and buy the real thing .. eh ?
Anyway in light of all the things I've just pointed out .. I don't blame the people for revolting and sticking it to Hollywood and the likes of Bell and Rogers who stand in their shadows ready to leech at every opportunity.
Yes Bell can call it Fair Use Policy .. I call it Fairly Abusive Policy.
To add insult to injury, they are hypocritical on top of being vampires.
If you think that the reason they are throttling has anything to do with bandwidth you are quite naive... it has to do with profit and control.
Regards,
CK
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