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CAIP, Telus, Consumer Groups Say Bell Should Pay For Throttling Nonsense

Posted in Commentary with tags , , , on September 22, 2008 by itnerd

The CBC is reporting that CAIP, a variety of consumer groups, and oddly Telus is telling the CRTC that Bell should pay up in more ways than one for the throttling dispute that they started:

“Telus agrees with PIAC that the apportionment for liability for costs be allocated solely to Bell Canada,” wrote the company’s vice-president of policy and regulatory affairs, Ted Woodhead. “The application by CAIP [to the CRTC] was precipitated by Bell Canada’s actions.”

I say oddly because Telus originally supported Bell’s throttling actions, but has since sensed a marketing opportunity changed its tune because they don’t throttle and as as result they think they can make a ton of cash because of that.

The reason why these groups want Bell to pay up is simple:

“Bell has manufactured a crisis, engaged in highly controversial self-help measures that it knew would disrupt the provision of retail services by CAIP’s members to their end-user customers and forcibly transferred to CAIP’s members the burden, inconvenience and entirely unforeseen expense of bringing this application,” wrote CAIP president Tom Copeland.

To nobody’s surprise, Bell has said FOAD rejected these calls to pay up:

“Bell has rejected suggestions that it should be liable for all costs, and that CAIP is not a non-profit group since it is made up of many smaller commercial companies. Bell has said CAIP should be responsible for one third of the investigation’s cost.”

I think the reason why you are seeing this is that perhaps the feeling is that Bell may lose this fight and these groups might as well make Bell hurt. Seeing as it’s lost a high profile case recently, that is entierely possible. It would be a good thing if that were true.

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Deep Packet Inspection Is A Privacy Invasion – Sucks To Be Bell

Posted in Commentary with tags , , , , on May 12, 2008 by itnerd

According to this post by Michael Geist, the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (which Geist is a part of) has filed a privacy complaint (warning: PDF) against Bell Canada over their throttling practices because it uses Deep Packet Inspection to throttle customers and they don’t tell their customers that they are using Deep Packet Inspection:

“Neither Bell’s Terms of Service, its Privacy Statement, its Code of Fair Information Practices, nor its FAQs state that Bell will use Sympatico subscribers’ personal information to examine the nature of the data packets they send or receive, or that it will use the information garnered from this examination to limit their ability to use the Internet at certain periods.”

The use of DPI is a big deal as it has a broad range of uses that should scare any user of the Internet. The media has picked this story up. CBC for example has a story on it on their website about this story.

This comes on the same day an interesting post appeared on DSLreports.com that seems to indicate that Bell lied to the CRTC about what they throttle.

Hopefully the CRTC is watching and will act accordingly.

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How To Test Your Connection To See If It Is Being Throttled

Posted in Tips with tags , on May 5, 2008 by itnerd

Some of my friends ask me how they can know for sure if their connection is being throttled by their ISP so that their Bittorrent transfers are slower than they should be. Or perhaps they’re not using Bittorrent at all. Instead, they are using a VoIP or VPN product and aren’t getting the performance they should. The good news is that there’s a web based tool called Glasnost which can help you determine what your ISP is or isn’t doing. You need a web browser with Java installed to use it, but it is very easy to use. Simply start the test (I recommend the full 7 minute test) and wait for the results. It will figure out if simple throttling is being used, or is your ISP using the TCP RST method favored by Comcast and anyone else who has Sandvine gear. From there, you can use that info to smack your ISP around until they wise up.

Tip: You should try this test at different times of the day as you might be throttled only at certain times of the day.

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What Bell Canada’s Mouthpiece Really Thinks Of The Media (And You Too)

Posted in Commentary with tags , , , on April 14, 2008 by itnerd

Jason Laszlo has been Bell Canada’s point man on the net neutrality issue appearing in various newspapers, TV and radio shows since the throttling of Bell resellers began a few weeks ago. So imagine my surprise when a reader of DSLreports.com came across Laszlo’s Facebook page. In it he has quotes like:

“Jason is realizing how little separates most journalists from lemmings”

“Jason is throttle-icious”

“Jason is throttle-ishus”

Just in case you think I am making this up, here’s a picture of his facebook page, as well as the thread on DSLreports.com that has been discussing the issue. Oh yeah, it’s hit other places on the web which no doubt is causing all sorts of grief for him.

Wow.

Since Laszlo works for Bell Canada and is their sock puppet spokesperson, you gotta believe that if he feels this way, the rest of the organization must feel that way about the media and their customers as well. I guess he felt the heat as his Facebook page went private shortly after this story hit the web (psst. Laszlo… Too late dude). It just shows that if you’re in the public eye, you should make sure that your private life doesn’t get in the way of your message.

Just for giggles, I’d like to throw something out there. I’d love to hear what Bell Canada or even Laszlo himself has to say about this. That’s right, I want to hear their side of the story. So leave a comment if you’ve got the guts to do it Bell/Laszlo. Tell us if you really think that journalists are lemmings and what you truly think of your customers. Canadian Internet users would be interested in hearing how you justify this. But I suspect you won’t even though I know that employees at Bell Canada read my blog (you gotta love the ability to log hits based on IP addresses and reverse DNS lookups). That’s too bad if you don’t, but not a great shock I suppose.

Still, you can surprise me by responding to this issue rather than hiding from it.

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Bell Canada To CRTC: FOAD!

Posted in Commentary with tags , , on April 3, 2008 by itnerd

Bell Canada has now officially upped the ante in their battle between itself and smaller players such as Teksavvy and Acanac. Bell is officially appealing a March 3rd ruling from the CRTC (the Canadian version of the FCC) that enforces a previous ruling that forced Bell Canada to open up it’s network to third party competition until such time that those third parties build their own networks. Why are they doing this? Simple:

“[Mirko] Bibic [Bell’s chief of regulatory affairs] said the decision to open Bell’s infrastructure 10 years ago was made in hopes that it would give smaller companies a base from which to build their own networks, but that has not happened. Many of the firms that use Bell’s network have instead become dependent on it and have not invested in their own equipment. “They haven’t built much,” he said. “The problem is, there’s no weaning off. There’s an underlying and ongoing and indefinite reliance on access to incumbent networks.” “

The article notes that this comes about a week after Bell Canada starts throttling DSL resellers. Co-incidence? I think not. It looks like Bell is trying to kill off competition of any sort. The fact is that DSL resellers rely on telcos (namely Bell) for what are called “Last Mile” connections between their customers and the network. Basically, building the infrastructure to deliver their services directly to the customer takes BILLIONS of dollars and no third party ISP has that kind of cash. Therefore, they are forced into dealing with an incumbent telco to sell their services to you the end user, which puts them (and you) at the mercy of the teclo. By the way, for those of you with cable based Internet if you get your Internet access from a company that is not your incumbent cable company, it’s the same deal.

Without the CRTC forcing Bell Canada to open up last mile connections to resellers (and not throttling them to death), any sort of meaningful competition in the Canadian market will disappear. That is bad for consumers. The only way to stop this is to do the things that I mentioned in this article. Otherwise Canadian consumers will be screwed. Royally.

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ISP’s To Bell: Stop Throttling Or We’ll Sue!

Posted in Commentary with tags , , , on March 26, 2008 by itnerd

I’m glad to see that ISP’s aren’t taking Bell’s attempt to throttle their resellers lying down. Canadian ISP Acanac is now telling customers that they’re considering legal action against Bell. I applaud their move, but I think more needs to be done. Canadian Internet users need to start urging their government to enact net neutrality as quickly as possible to stop nonsense like this from happening. If you check out this link, I think that this poster on DSLReports.com has the right idea. E-mail your MP, contact the competition bureau and the Industry Minister. Given that Canada’s Parliament is in a minority situation, this may be the ideal time to make this happen. But it will only work if lots of people do this. So get cracking!

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Bell Canada Throttles DSL Wholesalers Without Notice… WTF?

Posted in Commentary with tags , , , on March 25, 2008 by itnerd

From the “this is bloody stupid” file, comes the news that Bell Canada (the de-facto top telco in Canada) is throttling people who get DSL based Internet service from wholesalers (in other words, not from Bell). On top of that, they didn’t tell the wholesalers up front that they were doing this. The most noise is coming from users of Teksavvy who are with that ISP specifically because they don’t throttle anything such as BitTorrent (on top of the fact that they have superior customer service as rated by DSLreports.com). You can check out the original post on DSLreports.com that started the fun. Now the story is being picked up by Canadian tech lawyer Michael Geist and it’s being mentioned in Slashdot. The owners of Teksavvy have a meeting of some sort with Bell today to get some answers.

My take on this is simple. Bell has the right to do whatever it wants on it’s own service (which is Sympatico BTW). But if a wholesaler is buying DSL service they in my opinion have shouldn’t be messing with it (and not without some sort of prior notice). The problem is that Bell is the only game in many parts of Canada for DSL, so they may just say to wholesalers to FOAD, and everyone loses in the end. Here’s hoping that there’s a different outcome.

UPDATE: So much for hoping for the best. According to this, Bell Canada has confirmed that throttling is going on, they’re in their rights to do so, and if you don’t like it you can FOAD. Much as I thought they would. 🙁

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