No Truth In Advertising When It Comes To ISP Traffic Shaping In Canada

from the that-seems-like-a-problem... dept

Fri, Jul 17th 2009 1:24pm — Mike Masnick

Via Rob Hyndman, we learn that in the Canadian gov't hearings investigating broadband provider traffic shaping, the providers revealed a lot about their traffic shaping practices that seem to contradict what those same providers claim on their websites well selling connectivity. Even if traffic shaping is to be considered legal, shouldn't broadband providers be required to be honest about what they're offering customers?

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Filed Under: broadband, canada, isps, traffic shaping, truth in advertising

15 Comments

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:Lobo Santo (profile), 17 Jul 2009 @ 2:01pm

Canada National ISP
Where We Won't* Shape Your Internet Traffic; GUARANTEED!!

__________________________________

*will
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- Dark Helmet (profile), 17 Jul 2009 @ 2:24pm
  
  Re: Canada National ISP
  LOL!
  
  That was seriously awesome.
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cjmpe, 17 Jul 2009 @ 2:10pm

Dishonesty regarding traffic shaping?
Why should they come clean? After all in Canada if you want broadband, you have 2 choices, one telephone company or one cable company. Its a sh***y situation that the providers have zero incentive to fix because they know that you can't go anywhere else to remedy.
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Neo-Leper (profile), 17 Jul 2009 @ 2:19pm

I am glad I live in the USA where we have all these choices. In my area alone we have three, yes three ISP's. Cable, phone and Earthlink.... Which Earthlink goes through the cable isp, Time Warner, uses their hardware, TW sends me the bill for Earthlink, Earthlink goes by TW's rules, etc, TW is the one that fixes things when there are problems.....

Ahhhh.... the lands of choices...

Sad. Corporatism really did kill Capitalism.
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- PRMan, 17 Jul 2009 @ 2:26pm
  
  Re:
  Yeah, but at least you get to keep your old ix.netcom.com (best friend) or mindspring.com (brother) e-mail address...
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- Dark Helmet (profile), 17 Jul 2009 @ 2:26pm
  
  Re:
  ***Warning: Godwin's Law in Effect***
  
  "Sad. Corporatism really did kill Capitalism."
  
  A fascist Amerikan government STILL focused on fighting communism and a unified European continent....Hitler would have been so proud of us.
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- Techn1x, 17 Jul 2009 @ 5:26pm
  
  Re:
  Only 3 ISP's?
  
  We have over 200 ISP's available nationally wherever you live... (Australia)
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  - Neo-Leper (profile), 17 Jul 2009 @ 8:51pm
    
    Re: Re:
    Do you have down to earth, not as greedy as North America, ISP's, in Australia? If so I might be moving, lol.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Jul 2009 @ 3:03pm

Up To
Even if traffic shaping is to be considered legal, shouldn't broadband providers be required to be honest about what they're offering customers?

So what are they not being honest about? Their advertising says "up to" some number. Remember, "up to" includes zero. Don't confuse marketing with lying.
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B's Opinion Only (profile), 17 Jul 2009 @ 3:04pm

Fiber is the solution
What we need is for a smart, nimble and innovative company to set up shop and start running fiber into our homes. The New Brunswick government is giving Aliant telecom $60 million to do it, and they say they can wire every home in 2 cities for $857 per home.

I know that I would happily pay $857 or more to have an unlimited pipe coming into my home, and I would pay for the privilege of using as much real bandwidth as I wanted! Some months I might only use a few gigs, other months I would use hundreds. Just like electricity, water, and gas I would pay for what I use from an unlimited supply.

I'm curious how many others would pay to free their homes from the clutches of Bell and Rogers. Resident-owned fiber to the home is the solution. Imagine real competition for your telephone, Internet and TV service!

On another note, when I cancelled my Rogers Internet service last year, they asked why I was canceling and I told them it was completely because of the throttling. They pretended not to know what I was talking about, and their computers didn't have a 'check box' for that, so I made them put a note on my account explaining in detail how displeased I was. Unfortunately I went to Bell, who started throttling soon after I joined, after promising me that they had no plans to ever do so and would never do such a thing.
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- cjmpe, 17 Jul 2009 @ 3:36pm
  
  Re: Fiber is the solution
  Sadly your telecom organisation appears to be in the minority. My parents live on Vancouver Island and their Co-op cable company recently sold itself to one of the biggies (Telus, I believe) - every subscriber got a nice cheque, something like $2K, but now they probalby won't see the progessive thoughts of the NB government.
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- Techn1x, 17 Jul 2009 @ 5:25pm
  
  Re: Fiber is the solution
  Reminds me of how lucky we are here in Australia. We should be getting FTTH to 90% of homes in the next 8 years! Of course, it'll cost $43 billion, but hey I'm not complaining.
  
  The only problem we have is internet caps due to our location, but that should be fixed once more money is put towards larger bandwidth fiber across the pacific to the US.
  
  You guys in the US shouldn't complain about shaping etc. our government is trying to implement filtering! WTF! 90% of people are against it but somehow it's going forward...
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siliconbandit (profile), 18 Jul 2009 @ 10:37am

setbacks
The consumers are currently losing the war on bandwidth and pricing, at least for the time being.
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Jul 2009 @ 3:14pm

I have serious problems with the article in NowToronto.

They are trying to equate ALL download bandwidth with P2P bandwidth. While Bell might offer 10Mbps downloads, and shape P2P to 512k, they are NOT turning off the rest of your download space - just not allowing P2P to happen beyond a certain limit. So you could still watch a video off of YouTube or whatever and your P2P speed would not change. It isn't like they throttle EVERYTHING down to 512, which is what they are trying to imply.

The assumption by the NowToronto article is that users do nothing except P2P, which is just bogus. It is entirely a misrepresentation of the truth. Mike, you should be ashamed to link to this sort of misinformation, don't you read what you link to?
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Bedrijvengids, 18 Jul 2009 @ 8:31pm

With all the recnt reports out there that people trust TV ads more than online, I'd think people would start understanding how these media could be most effectively used together - broadcast to generate Awareness and Interest, online to stimulate Desire and Action. Integrated is the most efficient approach.
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