Loading ...Traffic shaping brings Net Neutrality debate to a boil
Last week, Howard Solomon’s story on ISP reaction to Bell’s traffic shaping policies — the throttling of P2P content whether it’s on Bell’s own Sympatico high-speed service or that of an ISP re-selling bandwidth bought from Bell — struck a chord with IT World Canada readers, becoming one of the most-read and most-commented article we’ve ever run. And while I’ve got a healthy respect for search engine optimization, I don’t think it was just the fact that we used “Bell” and “outrage” in the head that drove all that traffic.
(There are some words that are guaranteed to drive traffic when used in headlines, viz, “iPhone,” “porn,” and “Britney Spears.” Perhaps “Britney Spears iPhone porn outrage” is the perfect storm of a headline. But I digress.)
On Thursday, the Canadian Association of Internet Providers asked the CRTC for a cease-and-desist order against Bell, bringing the long-simmering Net Neutrality debate to a boil. Make no mistake — the CRTC’s decision on this matter will be precedent-setting. A CAIP victory could entrench the principle of Net Neutrality in Canada, without going the American route of trying, and failing, to pass legislation guaranteeing equal rights to the Internet backbone.
Reader comments on the story were uniformly critical of Bell, much of them along the lines of “typical monopolistic behaviour.”
“This level of anti-competitive behaviour from Bell should be expected,” commented Myrcurial. “Anyone remember the Centrex crisis from the mid-90s? The Canadian Association of Internet Providers was formed in 1996 as a direct response to Bell retroactively making significant changes to contracted services.”
“Does this move not negate any and every contract Bell has with any of its clients?” chimed in Samantha Vickers. ”Nothing I signed on for stated anything like this…I would not have agreed to it either.”
And Roland, from Surrey, added this heavy-with-bakery-analogies posting:
“I believe what’s really going on here is that Bell is trying to train it’s consumers on all levels to expect ‘less’ (all in the name of helping the movie/music industry and of course us from ourselves). So if the consumer expects ‘less’ of the pie than what they paid for that just leaves more ‘pie’ for Bell to re-sell, without having to bake more ‘pie’ (costly upgrades to actually service the client).”
Getting hungry now.
We’re interested in your two cents. Visit the story and add a comment, add acomment to this blog posting, or visit the Net Neutrality Resource Centre we’ve put together in response to the reader reaction.
Posted on April 4th, 2008 by Dave Webb and filed under Internet |
April 4th, 2008 at 6:51 pm
How is it that mobile phones have no problem with Bell’s offering of television programmes?
April 6th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
what about nbc, abc, cbc, fox wont let canadians acces there tv shows online, what role does crtc and content providers such as rogers have in this ?
April 6th, 2008 at 11:51 pm
Isn’t it strange that in Europe, where access to national networks is highly regulated, traffic shaping is illegal, and I can get the net for $19.95 at speeds of 25mb/s, unlimited usage, no connection charges etc.
We are being sold a pile of manure once again….
April 7th, 2008 at 9:56 am
More Competitors better services
April 7th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
This article is only focusing on Bell and their wrong-doings…. but what about Rogers and the same kind of crappy “rules” that they’re making their users abide to
I’m still amazed at the fact that Canada is a developed country and yet we’re still one of the most technologically-sheltered countries in the work
Our gov’t needs to stop allowing the 2 major players (Bell & Rogers) control everything and let more competition in. I can get better cell, internet and tv services in 3rd world countries (ie: Thailand, Cambodia, Egypt, etc) than here at home. Does that make sense? or is that just greed?
April 7th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
The only solution and the only solution would be for all customers of Bel to immediately call and unsubscribe to all of Bell’s services. instead you will all complain and really do nothing about it. It’s that simple. We can all live with out cable, internet and phone from Bell.
April 14th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
Look at it this way, Bell is not the only network performing traffic shaping to control the quality of service on a network. This is very common. For example, Shaw communications uses Ellacoya equipment to do the very same thing. What that thing is, is to provide some kind of guarantee that services on it’s networks will get bandwidth that they are required to have for some kind of standard. For example, if your Britney Spears download slows down a bit, you still get your download in a short time and Britney Spears still gets ripped off, but if your phonecall turns your voice into darth vader when you are trying to wish grandma a happy birthday because everyone decided to download Britney Spears during peak usage hours, then my friend, you are the one getting ripped off, especially since you pay for that phone service.
Traffic shaping is also used for virus scanning in ISP backbone, and mitigating virus/worm outbreaks that would otherwise eat the network alive. Hope that puts traffic shaping into perspective. Traffic shaping essentially provides a guaranteed quality of service over the internet, and allows everyone to share bandwidth equally. Why should P2P downloaders/uploaders ruin your phonecall quality? That is what net neutrality leans towards.