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CBC
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CBC

Anon

Rocky/TSI on the CBC

»www.cbc.ca/technology/st ··· oad.html

Bell proposal puts 'unlimited internet' plans in jeopardy, critics say

BCE Inc. is proposing to change the way it bills independent internet service providers who rent portions of its network, changes that small ISPs say will ultimately mean the end of "unlimited" plans for consumers.

In a recent submission to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, Bell proposed introducing usage-based billing instead of a flat rate for wholesale customers, a pricing method the company says is in line with changes it has made to its own retail offerings.

Bell cut its own internet customers from unlimited downloading in 2007.

"The implementation of usage-based billing for this wholesale service represents but a further appropriate step in the evolution of pricing to reflect the realities of the Companies' need to manage capacity on their networks," said Denis Henry, Bell Aliant's vice-president of regulatory and government affairs, and David Palmer, Bell Canada's director of regulatory affairs, in a joint submission.

Bell is proposing to begin the changes in billing beginning May 31, 2009.

The proposal would effectively kill access to unlimited download plans in Ontario and Quebec, according to Rocky Gaudrault, the chief executive officer of Chatham, Ont.-based independent ISP TekSavvy Solutions.

"If Bell were to be allowed to introduce UBB on this service, a cap of 60GB would be imposed on all of its users, with very heavy penalties per Gigabyte afterwards," wrote Gaudrault in a letter to his customers on Tuesday, April 14, the last day interested parties could comment on the proposal.

"This would inherently all but remove Unlimited internet services in Ontario/Quebec and potentially cause large increases in internet costs from month to month," he wrote.

Bell could not be reached for comment.
Proposal follows ruling on ISPs

The company made the proposal in response to a December 2008 ruling from the CRTC requiring Bell to provide wholesale internet service providers access to the same speeds Bell offers.

Smaller ISPs were given access to the networks of phone companies in the first place because the incumbents held a natural infrastructure monopoly, which was initially built through taxpayer funds when they were government-owned. The rules were put in place to boost the number of competitors selling internet access to the public, and thus keep prices down and service levels up.

In March, Bell petitioned the federal government to overturn the ruling, but the company was still required to come up with a plan detailing how it might charge the smaller ISPs for the service.

The proposal, submitted on March 13, introduced the idea of usage-based billing among its solutions, though critics who responded said its inclusion is inappropriate and unnecessary.

"Usage-based billing (UBB) represents a radical change to current practice and is not warranted," wrote MTS Allstream Inc. vice-president of regulatory affairs Teresa Griffin-Muir.

"It would effectively prevent competitive ISPs from offering flat-rated Internet services, or any other type of offering that didn't follow Bell's UBB model, since they would have no means of containing their costs, if their customers were to exceed Bell's usage caps," she wrote.

A group of nine respondents — including the Canadian Association of Internet Providers (CAIP), AOL Canada and Yak Communications — questioned the timing of the proposal, since the CRTC is already embroiled in a number of regulatory initiatives that could affect, and be affected by, the proposal.

Among these initiatives is the CRTC's plan to hold public hearings on July 6 in Gatineau, Que., on the traffic management practices of internet service providers.

Those hearings were set up following complaints from CAIP that Bell Canada is selectively slowing down or "throttling" internet traffic generated by peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing applications such as BitTorrent or "shaping" traffic to favour other applications over P2P in an effort to reduce network congestion.

That policy affects both Bell customers and customers of small, independent ISPs that buy network access wholesale from Bell.

The CRTC, which has the power to impose conditions on the way retail internet services are offered, is looking into what types of traffic management practices are used by ISPs and whether they violate the Telecommunications Act.

The CRTC launched an online consultation, hosted by Nanos Research, that will allow submitters to post responses to questions about internet traffic management issues until the end of April.

An0nym0us
@pathcom.com

An0nym0us

Anon

Maybe a bit off-topic, but I think it's worth noting in all of these UBB talks, the difference between other UBBilled infrastructures and communication network infrastructure. Although there are similarities between comm networks and things like the power grid, roads, sewers, etc, there are also important differences. I think people have tried to show these differences or at least compare these infrastructures, but no one has gotten it totally right yet. At least I haven't seen it. It's not an easy thing to do.

I used to think that UBB (ie. per data amount transferred) is proper for Internet Infrastructure since it's similar to other public infrastructures that we use daily, but I'm not so sure anymore.

How about an internet tax that would go to a public internet infrastructure? Maybe something similar to the TV tax in the UK (here comes a whole can of worms)?

It's important to find a good way of charging/paying for this new infrastructure since it's an important one that's probably going to be around for a while, like the electrical grid for example.

Maybe it's time for the government to do a thorough report on the best way to proceed with the country's network infrastructure, in light of the other the other infrastructures that surround us, and how others in the world are dealing with this new challenge?

WTF YOU SMOKING
@rogers.com

WTF YOU SMOKING

Anon

said by An0nym0us
Maybe it's time for the government to do a thorough report on the best way to proceed with the country's network infrastructure, in light of the other the other infrastructures that surround us, and how others in the world are dealing with this new challenge?
[/BQUOTE :


How are others in the rest of the world dealing with it? They're taking an approach is sure as hell is a lot better than ours!

They don't gouge the public with stupid caps nor do they throttle 24/7. They offer TRUE unlimited packages at REASONABLE PRICES! They also upgrade their infrastructure to meet demand.

Bell on the other hand, only invest in DPI boxes, lobbyists to protect the monopoly, money to bribe the CRTC with to ensure decisions are made in their favor and lawyers to embed ridiculous cancellation fees in contracts to discourage customers from leaving.

Canada will be the laughing stock of the telecom industry if UBB goes through.
33358088 (banned)
join:2008-09-23

3 edits

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other then the USA company time warner who is buddies with rogers ....then ya caps are comcast and otherwise reason able or unlimited EVERYWHERE BUT HERE

don't forget bell hires outsourced workers out side Canada
while most caip workers are IN CANADA

and when those CAIP people lose there jobs cause there bosses can't deal or aren't large enough to do things.

That's more to the harper economic plan of destroying Canada
This doesn't solve congestion like they think
this doesn't solve disabled employment issues
this doesn't help poor and rural areas that are poorer have access ( how is that 350 million harper plan going to be affordable to farmers or people in the north?)
this doesn't take into effect new and emerging technologies.
this totally is about price fixing and gouging

why are bell users allowed a 100GB cap and CAIP members being told they can only have a 60GB cap?

rogers upped there like a day after to 95GB?
if that's not collusion i don't know what is.
-----------
a nice quote off the cbc comments:

For an interseting perspective on this, look at this article:
»www.tomshardware.com/new ··· 530.html
This focuses on Time Warner Comm. in the USA. They are going to UBB, claiming that it's to cover their costs, yet the article links to TWC's own stats - they had a 10.5% user growth, an 11% revenue increase and a 12% cost decrease. So their "reason" for increasing rates is a lie, according to their own report.
-------------

Shada124
@teksavvy.com

Shada124 to CBC

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to CBC
Wow after reading the comments it is still clear to me that the public has no idea what and where bandwidth comes from, they still from what I read believe bell pays for it and that there is a limited amount of it.

Our ISP's Pay for it and well why can japan pump 160 meg to a house hold an if they want pass threw bell as often and as fast as their ISP allows not Bell. I f they while looking at something on the bell network then they would not be slowed in anyway passing threw no slowdown on the bandwidth pipe. It is the Off ramp from bandwidth onto Bells non congested, nothing to do with bandwidth network to zip your info onto the bandwidth unlimited super highway.
There is no shortage of bandwidth for it exists only cause people look, create use move manage and navigate the web without that nothing is on the highway.
Bell wants to put an extra toll on your already paid for band width as it passes threw there DPI "speed bumped" neighbourhood and they can, they are the only neighbourhood that leads you to the highway which they do not own or control or pay for other then for their own subscribers.

Bell is just the tollbooth operator and a toll payer all at the same time. But since they have made bad decisions to cut their costs and raise profits on their roads, they have noticed a massive reduction in traffic yet the lanes occupied by independent ISP's is increasing traffic free and unmolested by their traffic laws "To Many pot holes eventually you will find a new route to take home". They then decided to better Manage or Even out traffic back to their lanes they would regulate their traffic laws all lanes. Simple as that

AkFubar
Admittedly, A Teksavvy Fan
join:2005-02-28
Toronto CAN.

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I am hoping that Rocky, as CEO of TSI, has issued a press release to all major Canadian media outlets on this. This needs to get out there.

WaitForGodot
join:2009-01-07

WaitForGodot

Member

There is also a post on Stop the Cap
»stopthecap.com/2009/04/1 ··· -quebec/

JGROCKY
Premium Member
join:2005-05-19
Chatham, ON

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One thing that my brother mentioned about this is that Bell was told something like 3 times now by the CRTC to do the matching speeds.... Instead they contested it and introduced UBB! Oish... Not the right time to do this and very inappropriate as the CRTC asked very specifically, now multiple time the same thing!

The CRTC really needs to step into them hard on this one I would think... Otherwise it will set a precedence for the other ILECs and communications in general.

WaitForGodot
join:2009-01-07

WaitForGodot

Member

said by JGROCKY:

One thing that my brother mentioned about this is that Bell was told something like 3 times now by the CRTC to do the matching speeds.... Instead they contested it and introduced UBB! Oish... Not the right time to do this and very inappropriate as the CRTC asked very specifically, now multiple time the same thing!

The CRTC really needs to step into them hard on this one I would think... Otherwise it will set a precedence for the other ILECs and communications in general.
Is there a specific timeline or penalties to the CRTC orders or is it more like a "please do it, if you feel upto it" ?

JGROCKY
Premium Member
join:2005-05-19
Chatham, ON

JGROCKY

Premium Member

Really not sure at this point... Bell's pretty good at stalling tactics. I know there's something out there right now, but I'm not sure just what it is.

WaitForGodot
join:2009-01-07

WaitForGodot

Member

said by JGROCKY:

Really not sure at this point... Bell's pretty good at stalling tactics. I know there's something out there right now, but I'm not sure just what it is.
To a sane person it would sound too logical to invest in upgrading their infrastructure, rather than blame the world for all their failures and pay atrocious amounts of money to lawyers and lobbyists.

Maynard G Krebs
@teksavvy.com

Maynard G Krebs to JGROCKY

Anon

to JGROCKY
said by JGROCKY:

Really not sure at this point... Bell's pretty good at stalling tactics. I know there's something out there right now, but I'm not sure just what it is.
Not sure what there might be in legislation, but what we need is a breakup of all the incumbent telco/cableco's into a public common carrier providing FTTH, landline telco provider, content creators (ie. producers), content aggregators (in the role of mostly billing agents for the content creators), and ISP's - all of whom use the common carrier under net neutrality. Companies only get to choose one category to belong to, and cannot merge or hold more than 10% of a member of any one other category.

JGROCKY
Premium Member
join:2005-05-19
Chatham, ON

JGROCKY to CBC

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Lets not kid ourselves, they have been "upgrading" for years now...
JGROCKY

JGROCKY to Maynard G Krebs

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to Maynard G Krebs
said by Maynard G Krebs :
said by JGROCKY:

Really not sure at this point... Bell's pretty good at stalling tactics. I know there's something out there right now, but I'm not sure just what it is.
Not sure what there might be in legislation, but what we need is a breakup of all the incumbent telco/cableco's into a public common carrier providing FTTH, landline telco provider, content creators (ie. producers), content aggregators (in the role of mostly billing agents for the content creators), and ISP's - all of whom use the common carrier under net neutrality. Companies only get to choose one category to belong to, and cannot merge or hold more than 10% of a member of any one other category.
The problem with this thought is that we've already crossed that point at this time. It's hard to do a "take back" without causing a major disaster. Thinking the need to make lemonade out of lemons is about as good as we can hope for right now.... Too many changes would need to happen otherwise.

An_Onymous
@teksavvy.com

An_Onymous to WaitForGodot

Anon

to WaitForGodot
>To a sane person it would sound too logical to invest in upgrading their infrastructure,

Yeah. Considering the cost of a DPI box is about 10X more expensive for a Cisco box at the same capacity due to lower volume and higher hardware requirement. Bell is supposed to maintain their infrastructure, but obviously they didn't.

Hopefully, CRTC is going to take their usual sweet time to look at this tariff and push the implementation out to never never land.

Things to consider from the point of CRTC:
- Bell is offering 100GB for their Max 10 and Max 16 plans. 60GB is unfair.
- The tariff is supposed to reflect 15% + actual cost. Going to fun to see how they determine cost of over the limit charges (aka UBB). [Probably 90% of it goes to the billing overheads. ]
onlyrh40
join:2008-01-29
North York, ON

onlyrh40

Member

The fact that Bell management and lobbyists were in negotiations with the Harper cabinet makes this initiative truly frightening. The CRTC is a creature created by an act of parliament and it can be eliminated or changed very quickly. The media holdings of Bell, Rogers, and others makes them a formidable force for good or evil in the eyes of politicians of all stripes. Currying favour with the telecom/media giants is only natural if you are a politician. Both the Cons and the Libs will be anxious to reassure Bell and others that they have the guts to stare down the unwashed and do the right thing for the telecom/media giants. The telecom/media giants have to be broken up in much the same way that AT&T was broken up in the US. It would make sense to have separate entities as follows 1) Common Carriers. 2) ISPs'. 3)TV. 4) Sat TV. 5) Cell. 6)Newspapers and magazines 7)Other. It will take political guts. If enough people see the need to put an end to a powerful monopoly the politicians fearing repercussions at the ballot box can also act out of a sense of self preservation. In a nutshell this is a political issue first and foremost and the CRTC is just there to divert attention away from the government of the day.
Expand your moderator at work

cpsycho
join:2008-06-03
Treadeu Land

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Re: Rocky/TSI on the CBC

The only answer is to unbundle the local loop. I think we can take that back.

El Quintron
Cancel Culture Ambassador
Premium Member
join:2008-04-28
Tronna

El Quintron

Premium Member

I think the local loop is already unbundled, what we're looking for is to unbundle the Sub-Loop.

Someone who knows better feel free to step in here.

STN
join:2004-12-29
Canada

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Accurate, but much more complicated than it may sound.

Maynard G Krebs
@teksavvy.com

Maynard G Krebs to El Quintron

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to El Quintron
said by El Quintron:

I think the local loop is already unbundled, what we're looking for is to unbundle the Sub-Loop.

Start with all the CO's in Toronto/Montreal that are close to the subway lines and cut a deal with the TTC/Metro to string fibre down their tunnels to the NAP. Probably way cheaper to do a deal like this than to dig up the streets or to use Bell ducts.

This hits Bell/Rogers in their most profitable markets.

otty
join:2008-10-24
Revelstoke, BC

otty

Member

A little off topic but our oh so wise Feds are considering a $150 Million Bailout for CTV and Canwest while at the same time cutting CBC funding. Won't be anywhere to get news like this pretty soon:

»www.cbc.ca/arts/tv/story ··· ?ref=rss

Maynard G Krebs
@teksavvy.com

Maynard G Krebs

Anon

said by otty:

A little off topic but our oh so wise Feds are considering a $150 Million Bailout for CTV and Canwest while at the same time cutting CBC funding. Won't be anywhere to get news like this pretty soon:

»www.cbc.ca/arts/tv/story ··· ?ref=rss
The CBC is far too leftist for the Reform/Conservative party. They would love to see it dead.

not leftist
@mc.videotron.ca

not leftist

Anon

CANwest has been caught censoring its journalists a few years ago in favor of what the Can gov wanted.

Reuters had a shit fit

Journalists started refusing to sign their names on their articles, people went on strike, people got fired etc..

This might be on wiki (not sure). Check out canwest on wiki maybe.

So yeah, there will be "preferential word treatment" (play on words ) for these millions.

It doesn't come free. Control the media and you control a population.

anyhow yeah I agree otty, off topic But a great topic.

El Quintron
Cancel Culture Ambassador
Premium Member
join:2008-04-28
Tronna

El Quintron to Maynard G Krebs

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Yeah, I'm still holding my breath to see what kinda Bomb TSI is gonna drop.

I don't think the CRTC will rule in our favour.

otty
join:2008-10-24
Revelstoke, BC

otty

Member

It's a pretty bad sign that they sprung this on us with less than 24 hours notice. It is a good ground for judicial review of any decicion (inadequate notice).
33358088 (banned)
join:2008-09-23

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Member

to CBC
YA note that CTV and canwest are part of that bell network a hollywood noobs harper is buddies too

this is a cash grab by hollywood and a payback for not getting the draconian bill-c61 passed instead of worrying about WHAT your doing we'll just stop you form it, after 60 GB is enacted then we can just try 30 or 20
SCREW CANADA eh HARPER

-----
Also, how are rural north going ot afford whatever they build?
How are poor people or disabled who work form home via the net going to work.

ALSO it is not that hard rocky to take back the back end and nationalize it. IT JUST HAPPENS. DO a CHAVEZ on BCE for anti competitive and mismanagement of public funds.

Otherwise come that day they do this a lot of people are going to leave the net for the summer in protest, causing bell loads a cash and harper can give them that 150 million it will run completely dry quickly.

BELL will just give it to ceos and execs and shareholders, after its misspent what will be left?

ALSO notice the cbc timing and also how quickly in half a day the tech news moved it off the main map.
newSymp
join:2003-11-06

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yep and thats why i said in a thread that some 3rd party's ISP don't really care of the outcome unless they make a few dollars, because why spring it up 24 hours before the deadline.

I know bell can do the same thing, and email their clients, but i think on bells part it might have a negative effect knowing that their customers pay 2x more than teksavvy customers and for a lot less in bandwidth!!!!

the 3rd party dsl group need more informative solutions to tell their customers; more info, detailed, etc etc.

like someone posted on the first page, MOST people dont UNDERSTAND what all this means

Trisomy21
join:2006-04-27
Kingston, ON

Trisomy21 to not leftist

Member

to not leftist
said by not leftist :

CANwest has been caught censoring its journalists a few years ago in favor of what the Can gov wanted.

Reuters had a shit fit

Journalists started refusing to sign their names on their articles, people went on strike, people got fired etc..

This might be on wiki (not sure). Check out canwest on wiki maybe.

So yeah, there will be "preferential word treatment" (play on words ) for these millions.

It doesn't come free. Control the media and you control a population.

anyhow yeah I agree otty, off topic But a great topic.

No, we're not a communist country at all. Funny, places that are consider such have more freedoms than Canada. I'm actually thinking of moving to my favorite destination

El Quintron
Cancel Culture Ambassador
Premium Member
join:2008-04-28
Tronna

El Quintron to otty

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To be honest I don't think we're going to be screwed, because I have faith is TSI and I have faith in the people here.

I'm not much for FUD whether it advances my opinions or not. There are going to be options, as well as other spring ups.

I'm totally going on a limb here but does anybody know anything about openwan/freewan engineering/archtecture?