The IT Nerd

Today was the last day of the CRTC hearings into Bandwidth Management, and Bell must really be smoking some grade “A” crack. Because they made this statement to the CRTC:

Bell must slow the downloads of certain other internet providers’ customers to stop them from congesting its shared network and hurting Bell’s retail customers, the company argued Tuesday.

The only way Bell could allow those smaller ISPs — which buy network access wholesale from Bell — to manage their own internet traffic is if they used exactly the same method as Bell, as other methods would conflict, said Jonathan Daniels, the Montreal-based company’s vice-president of regulatory law.

“And if [they’re] going to do that, why don’t we just do it for them?” Daniels asked at a hearing before the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission in Ottawa.

Gee… That sounds like your retail business is hurting, so you decide to screw your wholesale customers to level the playing field. After all, why would you assume that your wholesale customers would want to throttle their customers? Did it ever occur to you that they may not want to do that? Of course not.

Oh yeah, Bell claims that they can’t tell the difference between their traffic and their wholesale customers traffic. But according to the article:

Bell’s testimony contrasted with that of MTS Allstream, which sells wholesale internet service similar to Bell’s in Manitoba. The company told the CRTC last week that it was able to distinguish between its wholesale and retail customers in Manitoba.

Hmmm… Sounds like Bell is at best playing fast and loose with the truth. However, Bell does have an option for ISPs who buy bandwidth from them if they don’t want to be screwed like a prison bitch throttled by Bell:

They could buy Bell’s high-speed access (HSA) wholesale service, which uses the same shared network and costs roughly twice as much, but is not subject to Bell’s traffic shaping. For example, Primus has purchased that service in some parts of Ontario.

Oh sure. Buy a service that prices most of these ISPs right out of the market. That’s a great plan… If you’re Bell.

So this closes these CRTC hearings. Hopefully the CRTC sees through the BS that was spread around by Bell, Rogers, Telus and other ISPs who throttle and restrict if not eliminate this practice.

From the “I can’t believe that they said that with a straight face” department, comes the result of Rogers appearance in front of the CRTC hearings into Bandwidth Management. Here’s what they had to say on the subject:

“Most carriers are trying to win customers from the other guys and try and keep the customers they have happy, so you should assume … that network management practices are for the benefit of customers,” Ken Englehart, senior vice-president of regulatory issues for Rogers, told a hearing before the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission in response to questions from the commission.

You’re kidding me. A lot of my customers have dropped Rogers because they do that sort of thing. So I don’t what crack he’s smoking. Whatever it is, he needs to share as it clearly alters his perception of reality.

Rogers wasn’t the only people to appear in front of the CRTC today. Quebecor who owns Videotron made an appearance today:

Following Rogers, Quebecor Media addressed the hearing on behalf of Videotron, which said it does not throttle but relies on usage-based billing to control congestion, and said that has worked so far, and has even curbed peer-to-peer uploads to some extent.

However, the company also argued against guidelines on internet traffic management, saying they could stifle innovation.

While I’m not a fan of usage based billing, the fact that they don’t throttle and they try to control bandwidth by billing their customers for excessive usage is far preferable to what Rogers is doing. If Rogers did what they did, I’d have one less thing to criticize Rogers about.

Bell was supposed to make an appearance in front of the CRTC today. But that has been pushed to tomorrow. It will be interesting to hear what they have to say.

Cogeco, Barrett Xplore, and Telus made an appearance in front of the CRTC Bandwidth Management hearings yesterday and to the shock of nobody, they both argued that rules that govern how Bandwidth Management is employed are not needed:

Yves Mayrand, Cogeco’s vice-president of business affairs, told the commission the company had “no choice” but to use that type of network management, as their cable infrastructure has limited bandwidth for traffic uploaded by its users and some applications are designed to “hoard capacity.” The throttling applies to both Cogeco’s own retail customers and customers of other ISPs that buy network access wholesale from Cogeco.

It really sounds to me that Cogeco has capacity issues that they can’t or won’t deal with and they cover that up by throttling their wholesale and retail customers. After all, it’s likely cheaper to limit what your customers can do rather than spend money to expand your network. Telus for one has expanded their network and worked for them. But according to Telus, that’s not really the case:

David Neale, a senior vice-president who deals with the company’s technology strategy, said asking ISPs to deal with capacity issues solely by building more infrastructure as some people have advocated is not realistic, even though it has largely worked for Telus so far.

It’s interesting that Telus says one thing, but does something completely different. Then applies spin doctoring when people point out the hypocrisy.

When it comes to telling customers about what Bandwidth Management techniques are used, here’s what this trio had to say:

Telus and Barrett Xplore executives agreed that there should be some disclosure of ISPs’ traffic management practices, but details aren’t necessary, as customers are not really interested. Nevertheless, Cogeco said it plans to provide some more details to its retail customers in the future.

That’s a load of bull. The fact that these hearings exist are indicative of the fact that customers ARE interested.

Monday is the final day of the hearings. Bell, Rogers, Shaw, and Quebecor are all slated to lie testify to the CRTC.  It should be interesting to see what they have to say. As always, you can get the live audio feed here and an archive of the previous hearing days can be found here.

So let’s assume that you want to solve the problem of ISPs who employ Bandwidth Management. You’ve got two options according to those who testified in front of the CRTC hearings yesterday. If you’re the Canadian Association Of Internet Providers, competition is the answer:

“When you increase competition in the market, the whole [internet traffic management], net neutrality debate will go away,” said Christian Tacit, counsel for the Canadian Association of Internet Providers. “I really do think this will take care of itself, as will the congestion issues.”

But if you’re University of Ottawa’s Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Research Centre (CIPPIC) or the Campaign for Democratic Media, that may not be enough. Strict rules are the answer. Here’s what CIPPIC had to say:

Competition is necessary, said David Fewer, acting director of CIPPIC, “but it’s not sufficient to address the problem.”

The Campaign for Democratic Media went further:

Steve Anderson, co-founder of the Campaign for Democratic Media and the Save our Net Coalition, said more competition will certainly help, but is something that could take years to happen.

“We need rules now,” he added.

I must admit that I have to agree with Anderson and Fewer. The way things are right now, the smaller ISPs like Teksavvy and Execulink buy their services from Bell. So unless another large telco sets up shop in Canada and has the ability to run “last mile” connections to customers, or these ISPs find a way to bypass Bell, there will be no true competition and these ISPs will be screwed by Bell. So the CRTC needs to lay down the law and make this sort of behavior verboten. That’s the only way this problem will be solved in the long term.

Day 5 of the hearings should be underway now. You can listen in live via this audio feed.

UPDATE: Recordings from the previous days in MP3 format can be found here.

The CRTC hearings into Bandwidth Management entered day 3, and opponents lined up to tell the CRTC that they need to make Bandwidth Management verboten in Canada.

Film makers were the first to say how craptastic Bandwidth Management is:

“If allowed to take root, such practices may choke off the only distribution method that currently allows independent producers to directly reach their audience” without having to through gatekeepers such as broadcasting companies, said John Barrack, national executive vice-president and counsel for the Canadian Film and Television Production Association (CFTPA).

You’ll also note that the ISPs who are best known for employing Bandwidth Management techniques (that would be Bell and Rogers) also have TV and Pay Per View services that would be bypassed by film makers who go direct viewer(which means no money for them). The more cynical among us would argue that that’s a factor in their decision to employ Bandwidth Management.

But I digress.

People with disabilities also showed up at the hearings to express their displeasure at ISPs who throttle:

P2P file transfers are also an important resource for people with disabilities, argued representatives of the Council for Canadians with Disabilities and the ARCH Disability Law Centre Wednesday.

For example, many deaf people rely on closed captions and scene descriptions for educational and other films.

The Adaptive Technology Resource Centre at the University of Toronto encourages the public to create those and then distribute them via P2P networks, where people who are disabled can access them, said director Jutta Trevarinus, one of the experts who spoke on behalf of the advocacy groups.

But Trevarinus said she has noticed problems when using P2P distribution through Rogers and Bell internet services even at times of the day when traffic is low and the companies say they don’t use traffic shaping.

Advocates for the disabled also testified they are worried about proposals that certain programs should be given priority as part of internet traffic management, as a lot of people with disabilities rely on non-standard programs and devices.

Some of those already don’t seem to work well with the Bell and Rogers networks. Trevarinus said she isn’t sure why the speeds on the networks seem slow when using those applications.

That’s something that I wasn’t aware of. I’ll have to remember that the next time somebody tries to tell me that Bandwidth Management is good for customers.

A quick reminder. If you want to hear what’s going on at these hearings, there’s a live audio feed available.

Google’s Jacob Glick (Canada policy counsel for Google) made an appearance in front of the CRTC Bandwidth Management hearings yesterday. Glick who works for the company that preaches that its core value is to “do no evil” made it clear that it thinks that bandwidth management by ISPs is “evil”:

“Giving carriers the power to slow down applications at their own discretion will change user behaviours, distort innovation and undermine the competitive market in applications,” said Jacob Glick, Canada policy counsel for Google, at the second day of Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission hearings in Gatineau, Que.

Exactly! That’s why this sort of nonsense by ISPs has to be prohibited.

The other thing that came out of Tuesday’s session is this:

Toronto-based technology consultant Jason Roks said new applications that consume more bandwidth are constantly being developed, and that’s a long-term problem that throttling certain applications won’t solve.

He said the real issue is ISPs are overselling their networks. If they can’t afford to upgrade their networks to support that many customers at advertised speeds, they should let customers go, he argued.

No kidding. Here’s an example of the above. I was once a Rogers High Speed Internet customer. But over the years my connection speed got slower and slower. I called their tech support line and they tried to blame my computers for the issue. Sorry, no dice dudes. So when I called them on it, they finally admitted that there were too many people on my network loop and that they would have to segment the loop to get my speed back to where it should be. That was going to take six to nine months. When I told them that was completely unacceptable as I wasn’t getting the speed that they advertised, they gave me a 50% credit for “degraded service.” I took that credit and switched to a DSL provider within a week. They gave me exactly the speed that they promised which is why I went with that DSL provider.

The fact is, there are tons of consumers out there that aren’t getting the Internet service that they’ve paying for as I get calls from them for assistance all the time. They call me because they suspect that something is wrong and their ISP lies to them tells them that speed related issues are the fault of their computer or router. Thus they need to get someone to prove that their ISP is lying to them incorrect.

If you want more on this subject, CBC Marketplace did a story on this about a year ago that is worth looking at. Plus I’ve written about how you can see if you’re getting what you’re paying for in the past as well.

Remember if you want to hear what’s going on at these hearings, there’s a live audio feed available.

In day one of the CRTC hearings into Bandwidth Management, Sandvine who is best known for providing the gear that Comcast used to throttle it’s users Internet connections made an appearance. What they had to say will get your attention:

“In times of congestion, an unmanaged network is not a neutral network,” he [Don Bowman, CTO of Sandvine] said. “Inequalities in application design and user behaviour mean that an unmanaged network inherently favours certain applications and their users.”

So what he’s saying is that network neutrality doesn’t exist and networks need to be managed for the good of users. Of course the fact that that requires his gear (or similar gear made be companies that compete against him) has nothing to do with that of course. He wasn’t the only one who sung from that songsheet:

Scott Stevens, vice-president of technology for Juniper Networks, a company that also offers internet traffic management technology, said part of the problem is technologies such as streaming video are very different from applications the internet was originally designed for.

“They don’t talk and be quiet. They hum constantly,” he said, in contrast to older applications such as email that exchange data only intermittently.

That means new network tools are needed to manage traffic, and companies need the flexibility to be able to develop those tools, he said.

“We feel it’s very important that innovation is able to occur at the network level.”

While there is a certain amount of truth behind that statement, there is some self interest there as well. Fortunately, there were some people on the other side of the argument:

John Lawford, counsel for the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, which is representing three Canadian consumers groups, told the CRTC Monday that DPI could invade privacy by revealing things such as the type of application, how long it was used and the types of search strings entered by the user. It could also be misused for marketing or unfair pricing.

“There will be abuse,” he said.

You think? It doesn’t take a genius to see that if you give a a major telco like Bell or Rogers the ability to throttle, they’ll use that ability to not only do everything mentioned above, they’ll also take out stuff like VOIP so that they don’t have to compete against it.

Let’s see what day 2 brings us.

A new round of CRTC hearings starts today that will cover the always heated topic of Bandwidth Management (a.k.a. throttling). The CBC has a story on their website that covers the main issues and provides a really good overview as to what’s on the table. As far as I am concerned, it’s required reading for Canadians who have any sort of Internet connection. If you feel like tuning in to hear what’s going on, there’s an audio feed available as well.

Here’s hoping that the CRTC finally grows a pair and makes the whole concept of Bandwidth Management a thing of the past in Canada.