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92 Comments
- amcnamar, on 06/02/2008, -1/+78"once a connection has been flagged as a P2P user, all traffic that is not white-listed is throttled."
I second that statement... If I run BitTorrent, shut it down, and then make a VoIP call, the quality is terrible.
I wonder if I could sue Bell for this (as I'm a customer of Teksavvy). - taketheleap, on 06/02/2008, -1/+35Bell == Comcast
not in customer numbers, but definitely in frustration and throttling levels. I can't wait to see what the CRTC does to them. - Waiting2awake, on 06/03/2008, -1/+30This is Canada - we pay a tax on all blank media. This was to appease those bastards before when they had their panties in a bunch over napster. Because of that, downloading is legal here(A.F.A.I.K) and uploading is where the criminal side of it comes it. As we are still paying those taxes on all media then I am assuming the same deal stands with downloading.....
Therefor what right do they have to throttle a legal service? - Waiting2awake, on 06/03/2008, -0/+27Why should you have to jump throw hoops? Is bittorrent legal? Yes. Here in Canada is downloading legal? Yes.
Is there in any part of Bells service agreement something that says they will throttle you for X reasons? If not, then how is this legal?
We pay them X amount of dollars, for Y amount of service. They are delivering Y-T. How is that even considered OK? If we throttled their payments I am sure the inherent problem would be clear. - amcnamar, on 06/02/2008, -1/+28Teksavvy was one of those providers. The problem is, Bell is throttling ALL traffic on its network, even traffic from ISPs who buy bandwidth wholesale from Bell.
So, Bell closed that niche market - oxdeltaxo, on 06/03/2008, -0/+21Rogers is doing this too, they also like to cap bandwidth at 60 gb a month.
- Topher06, on 06/02/2008, -0/+21Ultimately nothing as I believe that the CRTC simultaneously sucks on Bell's t*ts and kisses their ass. The CRTC is single handedly crippling competition and introducing new technology in Canada and keeping Bell and Roger's the two dominant telecommunications companies in Canada. CRTC imposed deregulation of cable and telephone lines yet Bell and Rogers find ways to continue to be anti-competitive in spite of CRTC regulation.
Oh, the CRTC might ultimately give Bell a slap on the wrist and force them to stop throttling services but then Bell will just find another way to do it and the whole process will begin again. The CRTC is impotent really in forcing Bell or Roger's to do anything. - Waiting2awake, on 06/03/2008, -0/+20We need a class action lawsuit against both Rogers and Bell.
- liquidfirex, on 06/03/2008, -1/+17Throttling of any kind should not be allowed. They can charge more, but they should not be allowed to throttle.
Their excuse of not having enough bandwidth is asinine. If that's true then the solution isn't to cut people off, it's to stop taking more customers or expand the infrastructure, period.
Both Rogers, and Cogeco need to be severely fined for anti-competitive practices as far as I'm concerned. - darkphan, on 06/03/2008, -1/+16ISP's are notorious for overselling their bandwidth, and then penalizing their subscribers for using the bandwidth that they (the customers) think they are paying for. Until they upgrade their infrastructure, they will continue to have congestion problems etc.
- Topher06, on 06/02/2008, -1/+14Go for it!!! I have seen legitimate content affected by Bell's throttling and that won't be tollerated. If Bell cannot be more selective about what traffic gets throttled, and understand that some P2P services are actually legit businesses, then they are going to get the sh*t sued out of them. The thing is they can't know what is being transmitted so the whole idea of throttling traffic is anti-competitive and criminal, period.
- BoneheadFarker, on 06/03/2008, -1/+12Except...Bell just open their own proprietary internet video service. So their whole "congestion" arguement is *****...
- jggube, on 06/02/2008, -1/+10Ouch, that's severe throttling. I can totally see a market of a niche service provider that doesn't throttle connections or interferes with internet usage activities, I wonder what the feasibility of this is, considering the cables and infrastructures are controlled by a handful of corporations.
- Shuk, on 06/03/2008, -1/+10The ISP issue is so bad, I'm sure there are a few competition laws being broken here. We get to choose between Bell and Rogers: both throttle torrent speeds and now they have a 60gb per month USAGE cap (in Rogers' words: "to better serve your internet needs").
The CRTC has done nothing. And it feels like our political leaders don't even know what the internet is. - N00F, on 06/03/2008, -0/+8Our Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) makes its shows available to Canadian tax payers as Bit Torrent Downloads. Effectively Bell is restricting access to the shows we have paid for, with our tax money. This is illegal and is currently under review.
- dislexicllama, on 06/03/2008, -0/+8Agreed, I'd like to see more competitors in the ISP market that actually have their own lines.. If a web hosting company such as 1and1 can lay black fiber across 90% of the US, a properly funded ISP should be able to service the bigger metropolitan areas of Canada with proper high speed access.
- DavidYeah, on 06/03/2008, -1/+8"In laying out its plans for dealing with congestion problems, Bell described a three-pronged approach that includes capacity building, usage-based pricing, and traffic shaping in combination to keep the network operational."
Usage based pricing? Are they going to be filtering out all advertising so my pay-per-bit bandwidth doesn't get sucked up by companies trying to sell me *****? I sure as hell am not going to pay for companies to advertise to me if it's costing me extra. - Akraz, on 06/03/2008, -1/+8It ***** pisses me off cause of lately most programs and files companies are hosting that are legal are through bittorrent. Like I said earlier in another Bell throttling thread.. im tired of this *****. Im with Rogers, its not that much better but they dont white-flag you and cap you 24/7. Its just too bad in Mississauga at least, Cable is only limited to Rogers since they decided to monopolize our municipality by buying the entire city out.
- InferiorWang, on 06/03/2008, -1/+8Because they don't want to build more infrastructure. I've never seen an industry complain so much about more business.
- inactive, on 06/03/2008, -0/+6My guess would be that the full extent of the CRTC's actions about anything related to Bell Canada can be qualified as a "reach around".
- supermanred, on 06/03/2008, -1/+7***** Bell.
- mizike, on 06/03/2008, -2/+8I'm on a bell wholeseller (teksavvy) and my service has turned to complete ***** during peak hours (read: 5pm to 2am).....bittorrent and skype are basically unusable for the majority of the day....I'd switch to a competitor in a second but a) the ONLY other option is Rogers, which is arguably even worse than bell; b) the people at teksavvy are just as pissed off at bell as I am and are trying to get bell to stop throttling, so I feel I should continue to support them; and c) the service is cheap and doesn't require a contract (same reason I have a pay-as-you-go cell phone, I'm willing to pay a bit more not to be tied to a company for 3 years of my life)....Telecom in canada is pathetic; we have (arguably) the poorest quality AND most expensive cell phone and internet service options anywhere in the developed world; but the government refuses to actually regulate the market in any substantial manner, so that's the way it's going to remain for the foreseeable future....
/note; the government does make ATTEMPTS to regulate the market, but they're all half-hearted and futile; for example the last time a piece of the radio spectrum was auctioned off it had to go to "new entrants" in the market....within 2-3 years all the new entrants had been bought up by bell / rogers / telus and the consumer was left with the same options....
/note 2: for this entire post, the comment text box was changing sizes every second or so, as such I had to write my comment in textedit and copy/paste it in to post....is there a way to revert back to the old / non-broken digg comments layout? - mrgreen4242, on 06/03/2008, -1/+7Comcast has recently started to heavily throttle my connection to certain, totally legals, sites. I have a 10mbit connection, when tested with a "bandwidth test" site, and it's quite fast for anything that doesn't compete with TV. But, any site that is even remotely competitive with TV is severely throttled. Examples: I can't watch Netflix's Instant View at anything other than the lowest quality, and even then there's a significant buffering time. I have to BUFFER YOUTUBE videos for at least half the video length. I've tested this by checking out some other streaming video from places like IGN where the content is apparantly not considered TV competition and I can stream YouTube or better quality video no problem. I have also tested this by trying to watch a YouTube video on my iPod Touch at home and then comparing the same video at work, which has a slower T1 line. Massive buffering time at home, none at work. They also seem to be messing with Hulu.com traffic. All of this is perfectly legal content and it's a relatively new phenomenon in my area. Verizon just started offering DSL to my house, though, and about 2/3rds the price of Comcast, plus some good "signup bonuses" While the connection is technically about half the speed (even 1/3 the speed depending on if you count the stupid "Speed Burst" thing from Comcast) it should be much faster overall since they don't have a vested interest in me not watching TV online...
I'll be dumping ALL my Comcast services this month and going with OTA HD, DSL, and another disc or two from Netflix. - username909, on 06/03/2008, -1/+7The big problem in Canada & the US is that we have what is called an 'oligopoly' in the telecom market, which includes internet service providers. For those of you who've gone over your monthly internet usage limit or have your internet connection throttled at the moment, and can't access 'wikipedia' here's the definition of this 'oligopoly'.
An oligopoly is a market form in which a market or industry is dominated by a small number of sellers (oligopolists). The word is derived from the Greek for a few over many. Because there are few participants in this type of market, each oligopolist is aware of the actions of the others. The decisions of one firm influence, and are influenced by the decisions of other firms. Strategic planning by oligopolists always involves taking into account the likely responses of the other market participants. This causes oligopolistic markets and industries to be at the highest risk for collusion.
What this means is that when Time Warner decides to only offer accounts with traffic limits, or Bell decides to throttle internet connections, or other telcos decide to cripple VOIP, the other companies that provide internet service, rather than seeing an opportunity to gain customers by providing unlimited traffic accounts, etc. will see an opportunity to make more money from their existing customer base by introducing limits as well. Think about it, if your company could make more money by offering less and spending less, why wouldn't you do that? Then, do what North American companies do best these days - advertise to try to get more customers instead of providing a better service / product.
The internet is causing established power in North America (old media, politicians and cops, for example) a lot of problems, the best thing for them to do is let the 'market' fix these problems so the status quo can keep rolling along... - jks139, on 06/03/2008, -0/+5They both have the 60gig cap. Bell started enforcing it (extra charges) by Sept 2007.
- dislexicllama, on 06/03/2008, -1/+6Yeah but they turn around and say "the more we upgrade our infrastructure, the more our users fill it up again". Well no *****, they're overselling and while trying to catch up on the amount missing [by upgrading], we're just using more of the amounts we were promised.
- DavidYeah, on 06/03/2008, -0/+4Your second last paragraph hits it right on the head. Everyone assumes that companies are always going to try to beat their competition to the punch and offer better service, but what happens just as often is that their NUMBER 1 PRIORITY will often be followed instead: making money for their shareholders.
Customer satisfaction only applies when it happens to be a part of the business plan. With something as confusing as technology like the internet, you can pass the buck around enough so that customers don't really know they aren't being satisfied by your company-- for example.. "it's not "our" problem your connection is slow, it's obviously your router/the web site/your computer". Who, other that people who know how the system works from end to end, can make an argument against this kind of reasoning? Why satisfy customers when you can pass the buck and still look good? - HonoredMule, on 06/03/2008, -1/+5My TOS (been a customer for quite a while now) made no provisions whatsoever for throttling.
- Waiting2awake, on 06/03/2008, -0/+4A recent study(How accurate it was though I don't know) said that BT traffic was about 3% of total traffic, the main ones are sites like google video and youtube, etc.
But that would put them against viacomm wouldn't it?
Much better to go after people downloading revision3. - RevEng, on 06/03/2008, -0/+3The graph of cell loss that Bell provided was actually quite insightful. Ignore, for the moment, the fact that the chart has an exponentially-increasing nature. First, look at the horizontal axis; the graduations are months. Each data point is, in fact, the number of cell loss events "per month". Now, look at the vertical axis. We're talking about 1000-5000 losses per month.
To compound matters, their definition is "any ATM port in the network experiences discards ... in a 24 hours period". Bell's network consists of tens if not hundreds of thousands of ATM ports. I personally can't tell whether this means multiple losses in a 24 hour period all count as a single event, or whether they are counting the total losses within a single 24 hour window every month. Considering there are only about 30, 24-hour periods in a month, and they are showing numbers in the thousands, the former definition doesn't make a lot of sense. Let's assume they mean the latter.
Just how many ATM cells are transmitted in their network within a 24-hour period? Billions. Thousands of billions. A single 10Mbit line could transmit enough packets to fill about 2 billion ATM cells. How many home subscribers do they have with 3Mbit lines? How many TV-over-IP customers with 15Mbit lines? How many business customers with 100Mbit lines? The number of cells in their network is ridiculously high. 1000-5000 lost cells in 24 hours is completely insignificant.
Now, all numbers aside, look at the shape of that curve again. How has their overall traffic grown over that same six-year time period? At an exponential rate. They have more subscribers and higher bandwidth per subscriber. Is it any surprise that their number of losses is growing at a similar rate? Congestion is measured by the percentage of all cells that are lost. If their losses are growing proportionally to their overall bandwidth, their congestion is staying the same.
According to the graph they've provided us, they are not experiencing a drastic increase in congestion -- to the contrary, their congestion appears to be relatively consistent. The only thing that is changing is that their traffic is growing exponentially, and with it, the total number of losses that they experience, but this amounts to a consistent level of congestion, and therefore the sky isn't falling.
Whether it does or not in the future is another question, but there's more than one way to prevent that. Sure, you could throttle back your customers, but you could also install more infrastructure to keep up with demand. That they insist on doing the former isn't the consumers' fault. - dogbyte_13, on 06/03/2008, -1/+4god and i thought comcast sucked. check this out before and after the hours of 8:30pm-10:30pm EST i get about 20-25Mbit down and about 2-3Mbps Up, during those hours i get about 2-3Mbps down and around 300-400K up!! ISPs need to fix there infrastructure if the are gonna keep on selling and selling to get more customers.
- trc0, on 06/03/2008, -1/+4eff Telus, they cut the cord on me for going 1700% over my limit.
- tehsly, on 06/04/2008, -0/+3No kidding I got stuck with a 5% over usage of my cap! ***** this, a class action lawsuit would be great!
- banderwocky, on 06/03/2008, -2/+5Where the crap is the right wingnut Harper government in all of this? Oh yea, off enjoying the money donated to them by the telecommunication monopoly.
- Topher06, on 06/02/2008, -4/+7If you can prove damages against Bell because of this, go ahead. The problem is that downloading illegal conntent and porn or phoning your mom wouldn't be considered damages in any court of law.
On a side note, you might be having problems with the way your router is tasking traffic. I know my VOIP service suffers if I run uTorrent at the same time, and it may take a few minutes after shutting down uTorrent before I see good VOIP service. I turned off a QOS feature on my router so that my VOIP traffic is considered the same as everything else (rather then trying to rank it for performance) and even if I run uTorrent and turn down the download/upload maximums, I can still make phone calls clearly. Another thing I did was to plug my DSL directly into the VOIP router rather then attaching it to my network hub. Most VOIP routers have QOS features and like to be directly attached to the Internet. - Yage2006, on 06/03/2008, -0/+3Speak with your dollar. Call and cancel your service.
If your on bell your getting screwed. - Nayamina, on 06/03/2008, -1/+3I see all this talk about Bell and their throttling practices, but is anything being done to collect information about Rogers? Rogers has been on Azereus's Bad ISP list for ages as well for their horrible throttling practices. Both these companies need to be looked at if you ask me. I wish the media would report on Rogers as well to get the word out.
http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/Bad_ISPs#Cana ... ...
Also does anyone know if it's true that Rogers throttles all encrypted traffic? - Opiate, on 06/03/2008, -0/+2I'm not fully aware of Telus' infrastructure but I know they use Bell's cell network. There's only a few providers here that resell broadband.. Bell, Rogers, Shaw.. Videotron.. all major players. Basically it's cable resold or DSL which is Bell everywhere.
- JnOrris, on 06/03/2008, -0/+2The problem is that Bell owns all the telephone infrastructure in Ontario/Quebec, and Rogers owns all the cable infrastructure. Then Shaw owns everything out west basically.
So to create a new infrastructure network would cost billions, remember Canada is a HUGE country (by land). So to lay any type of new network across Canada would be very expensive, especially considering our small population. That's why there is also a fight going on for the new wireless spectrum's in Canada, a couple companies are hoping to create a wireless network that could compete with bell and rogers in the future. - jeffness, on 06/03/2008, -2/+4the article isn't clear enough for me to say for sure, but I think there's a patent misunderstanding the author has as to the difference between Kbps (kilobits per second) and KBps (Kilobytes per second).
The graph seems to indicate 30 kilobytes per second transfer rate, which is way more than a dialup modem... moron. - BassJunkie, on 06/03/2008, -0/+2The ISP I use in the UK operates a throttling policy, but as far as I'm aware they base it on the volume of traffic you download in a set period before they throttle you back for about 5 hours in the evening (5pm - 10pm).
I'm currently on a 20Mbps connection as was downloading a rather large torrent. Each day, at precisely 5pm my connection would drop from around 10-15Mbps to about 1Mbps in total, and then at 10pm it would shoot back up. It didn't bother me as I was still getting the fairly high speeds during the rest of the day and normally don't download enough to trip the throttling - which is rather nicely banded depending on your speed so as I'm on the top service I get the biggest allowance :-) - sb66, on 06/03/2008, -2/+4"is that bad?" "he is a friend of president bush"
Well you just answered your own question. Bush is an *****, Harper is his friend, so yes that's bad. - cheesehead, on 06/03/2008, -1/+3 Here's a quote I read elsewhere which sums up the situation pretty well.
"This is just the same excuse that other telcos are giving for overselling their bandwidth vs their customers needs. These telcos need to learn how to provide enough bandwidth for peak times if that is what they're selling. If someone were to pick up a telephone at peak times and get an all circuits are busy message regularly during peak hours than there would be hell to pay.
We need to stop letting them get away with selling service to us that they cannot provide. As consumers we need to look towards other providers and build a market for service providers that don't pull these kinds of games. We also need to make it clear to these companies that their selling us services they cannot deliver is not acceptable to us. The only way they will ever get that message is through their subscriber numbers. As long as the big telcos and ISPs have the bulk of the customers they will never see the light until an exodus towards alternatives starts.
The only way that an exodus towards alternatives will occur is if we the people move in that direction and help the smaller companies build themselves up by moving to them.
This is all about overselling which has to be done to a certain extent but when the peak times cannot regularly be met then it is too oversold. Unfortunately consumers these days are sheep and will stay with these companies because they are cheaper/easier to get service from."
Telus is throttling as well. - Andrwmorph, on 06/03/2008, -1/+3RIGHTEOUS ANGER!
- Fhwqhgads, on 06/03/2008, -1/+3I suggest a mass nationwide boycott of sorts. Only pay them what they give you. If you pay for 5mbps and the ***** only give you 30kbps, do some math and calculate how much that cost you and pay them. I tell you, if people started doing that in large numbers they would shape up.
It's the "up to" ***** tricky wording that allows them to get away with it. There needs to be a guaranteed minimum and that is what is advertised.
There is no excuse for this crap. Stop advertising what you cannot deliver. Period. - ploke, on 06/03/2008, -1/+3I use Bell and BT and my internet drops to the point of being unusable at times. Every time that I call bell they tell me it is a problem with my router (even once when I WASN'T USING ONE). I would love to switch, but who is better?
- justaboutdead, on 06/03/2008, -0/+2how about this.... dont ***** throttle ANYTHING. if you are going to advertise 5Mb/s, then provide that... What congestion? That's just me capping out my limit.
- themastersb, on 06/03/2008, -0/+2Bell is already at half the speed of dialup for me even when torrents aren't running and I constantly nag to them about it but they never seem to do anything. Worst. Service. Ever. (subject to Canada)
- Waiting2awake, on 06/03/2008, -1/+3Yes, but you'd still need the gateway to the net, otherwise wouldn't it just be a larger lan.
- inactive, on 06/03/2008, -3/+5The right to property?
Don't sign the TOS is you don't like the TOS.
This isn't about the legality of P2P, it's about relieving congestion instead of updating the technology. They are saving a ***** load of money doing this.
And the people doing the complaining are small ISP's that purchased wholesale gateway service from Bell.
The real issue isn't even about the right to throttle the network or not, it's simply about providing services as advertised to other companies.
Since end-users sign the end-user TOS, they agree to throttling. But the gateway service isn't supposed to be throttled.
Here's the decision:
http://www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2008/d ...
The ISP's failed to prove that the throttling was actually affecting them so they were denied.
And Bell doesn't get your tax money. -
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