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I want to emphasize an angle to BellNexxia's traffic policy that's been ignored in most reporting so far. Anecdotal evidence from people in areas where traffic shaping has been turned on indicates that Bell's tools are extremely blunt weapons. They are reportedly slowing down or rendering unusable all encrypted communications, including protocols used for voice over internet (internet phone services), possibly the secure HTTP protocol used for online ecommerce including online banking, and VPN protocols used to tunnel private data over the public internet. None of these tools are in any way related to P2P or overall traffic use, but all of them have been caught up in the overly broad net used by Ontario ISPs to filter internet traffic.

The implications for me when BellNexxia imposes traffic filtering in my area (Ottawa) will be severe. I will no longer be able to phone family in Vancouver over the Internet (at no cost) and will instead have to fall back on making long distance phone calls. I will no longer be able to manage my parents' computers remotely or easily share photos with them over our VPN. Closer to home, as a student, there is a very real risk that I will not be able to access academic research databases from off campus and will need to commute 40 minutes to access electronic materials I've so far been able to access at home. Bell has no legitimate right to impose these costs on me for any reason, let alone as collateral damage as part of a highly questionable war on P2P users.

Moreover, because Rogers implements the same policies as BellNexxia is imposing, it's not clear if I can get back the services I currently enjoy at any price short of the $3000 a month fee required for a dedicated commercial connection. I don't have that kind of money to spare.

My situation, though, is really just the tip of the iceberg. BellNexxia traffic shaping will severely impact people who telecommute from home and freelance/home business professionals who regularly need to move client files confidentially over the Internet. There is a very real risk that these people could be unable to do their jobs once BellNexxia's traffic shaping rollout is complete. I'm going to be severely inconvenienced by Bell; others who need to use VPNs for their jobs could be put out of work or forced to leave the province (!) to get unfiltered Internet access.

The whole P2P issue is really secondary to the fact that what Bell has done in the past few days is quantitatively different from ordinary P2P filtering as implemented by ISPs such as Bell-Sympatico and Rogers.

What Bell is doing is filtering their backhaul network which moves internet traffic from subscribers to third party ISPs. By placing filtration gear on the backhaul network, BellNexxia is restricting competition.

As you probably know, Bell-Sympatico filters traffic to restrict the use of P2P applications. Virtually all of Ontario's 3rd party DSL ISPs earned their market by offering unfiltered service. By imposing filtering on the backhaul network, BellNexxia has essentially prevented Bell-Sympatico's competitors from offering substantively better service than what Sympatico chooses to offer.

What's going on here is not a network neutrality issue as much as it is an apparent conflict of interest between Bell as an ISP (Sympatico) and Bell as an infrastructure provider (BellNexxia). The CRTC is supposed to prevent these kind of things from happening, *especially as BellNexxia's backhaul is regulated by CRTC order.*

My overall point here is that BellNexxia's questionable zeal to attack P2P users has lead to them adopting practices akin to using a nuclear device to kill a fly. They're going to penalize a lot of people for things that have utterly nothing to do with P2P or alleged overuse of Bell's backhaul bandwidth. What Bell is doing is unethical, unreasonable, a threat to privacy, and a threat to the Canadian economy.

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Some hours ago I sent the following to Shawn Benjamin:

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I want to emphasize an angle to BellNexxia's traffic policy that's been ignored in most reporting so far. Anecdotal evidence from people in areas where traffic shaping has been turned on indicates that Bell's tools are extremely blunt weapons. They are reportedly slowing down or rendering unusable all encrypted communications, including protocols used for voice over internet (internet phone services), possibly the secure HTTP protocol used for online ecommerce including online banking, and VPN protocols used to tunnel private data over the public internet. None of these tools are in any way related to P2P or overall traffic use, but all of them have been caught up in the overly broad net used by Ontario ISPs to filter internet traffic.

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