It's Good To Be A Monopoly: Bell Canada Tells ISPs To Shut Up And Accept Traffic Shaping
from the what-are-you-gonna-do? dept
Remember how Bell Canada had decided to start traffic shaping without telling any of its ISP resellers? Well, in a meeting with those resellers, the company both admitted it and told them there was nothing they could do about it, even if it meant that those ISPs were violating their own terms of service and promises to customers. It's good to be a monopoly, you see. Since those ISPs have nowhere else to go, Bell Canada is able to do whatever it wants to the network, and if those ISPs don't like it, they're pretty much out of luck.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: canada, telcos, traffic shaping
Companies: bell canada
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Alarms
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Nowhere else to go?
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Pay an attorney and find out if the early termination fee is still binding. Then let us all know the result.
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Complain to?
Not that it really will change anything, but I at least want to do my part.
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Facts on socialistic socities.
See kids, this is what socialism does to you. Take a look at the (sic) market-friendly society up north.
Do some research on and ask yourself is the right one for you?
What's Ross Perot and Ron Paul up to these days? I ask only because these guys seemed to be right on the Federal Reserve years ago.
Then today Hillary proposed a $30B bailout from the Federal Reserve today. Can you believe it? The thing is that it's missing a few decimal points. If it was closer to $3T, it might fly. But of course, she doesn't want to tell anyone how bad the shit has dropped.
FYI:
$3T looks like this:
$3,000,000,000.00
...and buys a whole lot of gasoline, I may add.
Hope the war was worth it. Haliburton relocated it's HQ to Dubai? Well... at least Cheney's out of the country when this mess is done.
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Its gettign bad
Lets hope the next government is at least Liberal, they both always end up cancelling each other out anyways!!
Roger's is also flexing its muscles.. almost as bad as Bell
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Re:
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The thing about it...
Bell is a blatant, defacto Monopoly, and they've got us all by the balls. Rogers too.
It's an absolute disgrace, and nobody seems interested in doing anything about it. These companies don't give a fuck about you, and as long as the CRTC continues to allow it, nothing's going to change it.
BTW, mr 'Anonymous Coward', we have issues with monopolies with our banks, phone companies, and cable companies, but it stops there. They're not government companies, and it ain't socialism. Perhaps MORE socialist than countries than say the United States, but at least we still have our constitutional rights. You could stand to look up socialism in a dictionary. This sorta thing sucks, but Canada's still the best country in the world.
Fellow Canadians, I suggest you start by complaining very loudly to the minister of commerce in your province, and federally, and your local and federal politician.
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My reply
So if my cable company does something I don't like and I want cable service without a dish stuck to my roof, I've got other choices???
If my electric company does something I don't like and I want to keep electricity but don't want a windmill* in my yard, I've got other choices???
If my water company does something I don't like and I want to keep water without lining my yard with buckets, I've got other choices???
If my gas company does something I don't like and I want to keep gas without drilling a hole in the ground, I've got other choices???
Stupid Canadians. ;)
*Carmel, IN forbids home owners from applying windmills in their yards.
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Ummmm...
Spuds
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Re: Facts on socialistic socities.
> $3T looks like this:
> $3,000,000,000.00
Actually, it doesn't. It looks like this:
$3,000,000,000,000.00
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Re: The thing about it...
The CRTC will take the complaint. But has nothing to do with billing, or anything else. It should
However our government has been to busy kissing the us's assess with the DMCA, to see that they need to do something.
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Gotta love the arrogance
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Re: Alarms
This isn't about net neutrality. NN doesn't mean forbidding traffic shaping, it means forcing ISPs to treat everyone equally. That means that with NN they couldn't provide an improved performance to one web site (streaming video provider, etc) that paid more for it, compared to another who didn't. But if they want to shape all traffic the same for all providers, that is not a NN issue. Net neutrality means being neutral to who is providing the content, not neutral to what kind of traffic it is.
I'm not saying this doesn't suck, I'm just saying it's not a violation of net neutrality. *Good* traffic shaping would prioritize things that need low latency (eg VOIP). This is bad traffic shaping, because it throttles traffic that the ISP doesn't like.
IMO, if their network cannot handle the traffic they're getting at flat-rate fees, then start charging by the MB and use the money from the heavy users to build out the network to the point where it *can* handle the traffic. That is of course a pipe dream, but it would be a fair solution.
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Re: Nowhere else to go?
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Re: Nowhere else to go?
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Re: Facts on socialistic socities.
By the way, the US could learn a thing or two about social services if it weren't so paranoid.
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Founder Alexander Graham Bell is now shamefaced!
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Re: Nowhere else to go?
Okay, this is one thing many people (even many network administrators) sadly miss the point of that annoys me greatly:
There is plenty of bandwidth/NSPs within the internet infastructure, you could have multi-gigabit at your office/datacenters, but it means nothing, and I do mean absolutely nothing, if you're an ISP that can't get your bandwidth to your customers. In North America, there's usually only 2 options when it comes to wired connectivity to homes: Cable or DSL (FiOS doesn't count yet due to it's lack of proper coverage), both of which are already controlled by incumbents (Bell is an incumbent). To get bandwidth from your customer to your company's network, you have to rent out the lines from the incumbents because laying your own would be cost prohibitive.
Now, the situation here, is that the competing ISPs who purchase bandwidth from Bell to the last mile, are being THROTTLED even when said ISPs are using their own connectivity to backbones and NOT bell's.
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