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Interesting blog post re Bell Throttling »
« Bell to remove throttle and compensate users.  
page: 1 · 2
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munky99999
Munky

join:2004-04-10
canada
clubs:

reply to sbrook
Re: Bell shareholder report re Bell Throttling (was inter. blog.

said by sbrook See Profile :

This is nothing to do with CRIA. Were it CRIA induced there's a far easier way of dealing with it. Start turfing people off! Moreover, there wouldn't be a public backlash because they'd start waving about spin control words.
Except the supreme courts have shut that possibility down.


sbrook
Premium,Mod
join:2001-12-14
H0H 0H0

1 edit
reply to munky99999
This is nothing to do with CRIA. Were it CRIA induced there's a far easier way of dealing with it. Start turfing people off! Moreover, there wouldn't be a public backlash because they'd start waving about spin control words.

munky99999
Munky

join:2004-04-10
canada
clubs:

reply to andyb
You know what... rate plan changes... we get it... you want more money. FINE! We know you are making a profit(20billion$$$$$). So it means better quality service being rolled out. Great. Better service for more money. No problem.

ADSL2++ delayed. No big deal honestly... a load of us aren't even capable of getting 3mbits/sec profiles and you've already said you dont give a shit about us on lower profiles. RDSLAMs cost too much. Plus I am happy enough with the speed I am getting. I download what I need in proper speed. Eve-files gets those movies to me no problem. While I play eve-online. Fine... I'm not going to complain.

You then throttle my internet which effects everything. Suddenly http downloads never ever go over 100kb/s The speed jumps like mad. Everything else is accordingly slowed down. There is obvious issue here. The product I was getting for a price went up in price and the product quality just dropped. That's characteristic of a monopoly. WHY is this happening? Congestion! But there is no congestion. Hmmm. What is targeted? p2p and bittorrents. The things that CRIA has been crying about for ages.

CRIA would send letters and stuff constantly... cogeco would forward the letter but wouldn't reveal information so CRIA could sue. Bell never even forwarded the letter. Not even scare tactics.

Suddenly bell is playing their game and are doing exactly what CRIA would love for them to do.

They unfortunately saw how many of their customers followed the free market and went to the better service and/or product. Which is their competitors who didn't throttle. Which is a huge failure for bell.

At this point however they were basically screwed. The free market and competition laws will basically not get you into any sort of boycott or PR disaster but people effected by slow speeds... and if you see a giant decrease in speeds. You notice no matter how computer savvy you are. You will want to know why. You discover teksavvy saying how your internet is being purposely messed with and if you come to their dsl plan you wont have any problems switching over and you will regain your speed.

Bell was basically just committing suicide. That's it. They were going to loose their market share. Which means bad things for them... but there's no problem. Competition will force them to change that tactic. Which isnt good for bell. Money down the drain.

When they broke the law and started throttling their competition. Completely in the attempt of non-competition. They broke a federal law and are now dealing with the PR disaster. People who would never ever have heard about throttling and dont even care... wont bother going to bell. Many wont renew contracts. Just because of this one. Add on top of this that they will be eventually ordered to at least stop throttling the competition. Which in turn will screw them royally as they go back to the free market and have to compete against no throttling. That wont work out.

The people who are downloading like mad arent going to change. They are going to find competition who allows them to download. Collusion and refusal to deal anti-competition wont work for long.

How much did Microsoft have to pay the EU? 1.5 billion for their anti-competition? What effect do the board of directors think 2 billion having to be paid? I think if I had to give a big chunk of my cash away I wouldnt be happy.


andyb
Premium
join:2003-05-29
SW Ontario
reply to TobiasFunke
As the OP I was making no calls as to whats obvious or not.I merely posted what I saw.What I see is more than most people in the forums see.


sbrook
Premium,Mod
join:2001-12-14
H0H 0H0
reply to TobiasFunke
That refers to everything from the DSLAMs outwards to the onramps.

TobiasFunke
Premium
join:2007-02-27
Toronto, ON

reply to andyb
What's interesting but not immediately obvious in the OP is this:
"With the rapid growth in video and other bandwidth- intensive applications on the Internet, we may need to incur significant capital expenditures to provide additional capacity on our Internet network. We may not be able to recover these costs from customers due to competitors' short term pricing of comparable Internet services. There is also a risk that our efforts to optimize network performance, as a result of significantly increasing broadband demand, through paced FTTN roll-out, traffic management and rate plan changes, could be unsuccessful and result in an increase in our Internet subscriber churn rate beyond our current expectations thereby adversely affecting achievement of our expected number of Internet subscribers in 2008. This could have an adverse effect on our results of operations."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Bell refers to its telco infrastructure as its "Internet network" - this would be a terrible misnomer. That being the case, this would suggest that they lack capacity more at the Internet-facing side of things (read: Sympatico) and not, as they would have us believe, internally.

If true, this makes even more plain the anti-competitive nature of Bell's decision to throttle wholesalers.


sbrook
Premium,Mod
join:2001-12-14
H0H 0H0
·Rogers Hi-Speed

Host:
Rogers
Bell Canada
reply to Glen1
Re: Is this really about Torrent or is it about ipTV competition

Precious few correct facts in your rant there citizen.

1) Resellers are competitors if they can entice customers away from you. Remember that Bell's financial dept has to use numbers of subscribers as justification for obtaining financing/spending money. Competition is not always about price.

2) Recover costs ... they don't build out infrastructure for free ... and if it takes longer than the budgeted period, then the costs aren't considered recovered.

3) Overselling is a cornerstone of providing residential ISP services.

4) Costs of doing business are still costs that have to be recouped from somewhere.

6) Bandwidth in the overall scheme of things within Bell's network is limited. More routers cost money ... you don't get complete writedowns, and moreover, you have to make profits to write stuff down about.

7) Per gig billing is there because they aren't a pipe provider ... And Long Distance per minute calling is there totally valid. Imagine I rent cars. I charge a $100 rental fee (your connection fee). You rent the car and drive it for a day. I rent the car tomorrow to someone else. Now, by your basis, where time doesn't matter, you now decide you'll rent my car but you keep it for a year, but you're still only paying me the $100 connection fee. Hmmm I can't rent that car out for say 300 days of the year because you've got it. So, I lost $30,000 rental charges.

Why can Long distance providers offer unlimited calling? Because they make a valid estimate of what the costs would be to have their trunks in use for the times typically used by "unlimited" and an estimate of the number of connection charges to carriers they'll make. If they get it wrong, they're screwed. If they get it right, they've made money.

8) They do have lots of misinformation, but if any of your other responses are like these, they'll be full of holes too!


Glen1
These Are The Good Ol' Days.
Premium,MVM
join:2002-05-24
GTA Canada
reply to citizenziggy
Very interesting perspective...compare it to the oil cartel.
--
My Canada includes Quebec.


citizenziggy

@rogers.com


from:
Riplin See Profile

 reply to andyb
Is this really about Torrent or is it about ipTV competition

The logic and assumptions in that paragraph are misleading to their shareholders.

#1 What "competitors" are providing better short term pricing? There is only ONE competitor for BELL(dsl/wimax) in any territory -- that being Cable. Any 3rd party adsl reseller MUST buy wholesale services from Bellnexia(BELL) under government regulation to deregulate. Keep in mind BELL sets the wholesale price.

I think it's clear to any internet subscriber in Canada that there is no significant price war in this oligopoly. Cable companies are doing the exact same thing. The assumption that Cable might take those customers through lower pricing is flawed. Shifting the "over-capacity" to the Cable operator will only subject them to same predicament unless Cablecos have built out a better (higher capacity) network OR manages their transit data routing more intelligently.

#2 I do not understand what costs they need to recover from customers using "bandwidth intensive applications"(Torrent or TV-over-internet competitors -- which is the real reason??). The fact is both CABLE and BELL already have "bandwidth caps" in their Terms of Services which once exceeded bills the customer for each additional GB used. BELL & Cable are already recouping costs for any over-usage from high demand customers. By shaping services they are clearly imposing restrictions that only puts "undue discrimination" on "bandwidth intensive applications"(TV over internet competitors).

#3 If they do not have the capacity that simply means they have miscalculated their "inventory" and oversold their services. In a not-so perfect comparison, one cannot sell slices of pizza and once all sold, continue to sell the same pizza by slicing off from customers they have already sold to. Make more pizzas!

#4 If they are in the business of providing service, increasing capacity is simply a cost of doing business. Instead of building out more capacity they have chosen to spend their capital resources on bandwidth-shaping and micro-provisioning technologies. e.g., It costs more to provision a 10mbit line into (10)1mbit lines than it is to increase the capacity.

Add the money they are spending on PR, Government and industry lobbyists and lawyers and I see no reason why they could not build the additional capacity required to support the over-subscription of their services.

#5 Are they waiting for government(the people) to pay for the building of their networks through tax credits and subsidy?? LIKE BEFORE....

#6 As I eluded to above is this really about capacity or is this about competition for eyeballs being lost in the media divisions of these converged corporations? If a subscriber is using the Internet they are not likely watching 'olde-skool' TV. This loss of audience control reduces ad revenues in the ISPs media businesses. Both BELL and Cable companies are rolling out ipTV solutions in walled-gardens(closed networks) and would prefer their Internet subscribers watch "their" media offerings. "bandwidth intensive applications" as they refer to are essentially online products that directly compete with their media offerings. To me it sounds like they are simply using their regulated control of the last-mile to 'herd' subscribers back to their media offerings by making it too expensive to use other services.

e.g., Joost uses approximately 1GB of data transfer per hour. The average bandwidth cap in Canada is ~25GB/mon..
That means after one watches 25hrs of Joost they will be subject to $3-$7 additional costs per additional GB. I really cannot see subscribers paying $3-$7/hr. to continue to watch Joost instead of opting for a TV package from BELL or Cable.

#6 Bandwidth is not scare. Bandwidth throughput capacity over fibre-optic doubles every 18 months (Moore's law). The capacity is already within their network. They still need to increase the capacity of node routers but that is a fixed-cost capital expenditure that can easily be amortized and written off as expense. We are paying for it anyway.

#7 Is the illusion of billing per GB simply a replacement for the illusion of billing Long Distance calls per minute.

I am sure everyone visiting the dslreports website knows what VOIP is. In the old Telecom world a telephone call is switched, routed and terminated at a fixed cost whether that call is 1 second, 1 hour or 1 day. Some how Telcos have convinced the public and government that the cost of a LD call is based on time as opposed to the connection.

VOIP shattered that illusion and pulled out the bottom piece on their Jenga(TM) Tower and within 5 years the majority of the revenues have disappeared. It is clear to me that billing per GB is meant to replace that lost revenue by creating yet another illusion of scarcity. It appears that ISPs are employing similar slight of hand tricks to fool the public and government.

#8 I have plenty more to say about this and to poke holes in their blatant misinformation and twisted logic but I need to get back to work so I can pay for my Internet service.

Please correct if I am wrong.

CitizenZiggy Esq.
digitalpeasant


sbrook
Premium,Mod
join:2001-12-14
H0H 0H0
reply to DKS
Re: Bell shareholder report re Bell Throttling (was inter. blog.

Gotta love this "order management system" that caused a loss of subscribers ... this is weird! Do they mean loss of potential orders that the phone and chatbox people couldn't get because customers didn't want to be pushed that way????


DKS
Damn Kidney Stones
Premium,ExMod 2002
join:2001-03-22
Owen Sound, ON
clubs:
·Bell Sympatico

reply to sbrook
And more:

Cable hurt.

quote:
The number of high-speed Internet subscribers increased by 154,000 in 2006, compared with 254,000 in 2005, bringing the total subscriber count as at December 31, 2006 to 1,877,000. Our primary focus in 2006 was to up-sell customers to higher-speed products in order to increase ARPU, drive subscriber growth through expanded use of hardware offers and reduce customer churn. Sympatico’s subscriber growth in 2006 was adversely affected by the impact of ongoing aggressive price discounting on multi-product bundle offers from the major cable operators in our markets. Moreover, the significantly higher number of net additions in 2005 was driven by the introduction of our Basic Lite service offering in the Ontario market and by substantial footprint expansion. A major upgrade to the Sympatico order management system during the fourth quarter of 2006 also negatively impacted the sales process within our retail channels and at our contact centres.
--
Need-based health care not greed-based health care.


DKS
Damn Kidney Stones
Premium,ExMod 2002
join:2001-03-22
Owen Sound, ON
clubs:
·Bell Sympatico

reply to sbrook
And here is where it's going. FTTN and 40 megs down, depending on demand and willingness to pay.

Under Strategic Priorities

quote:
Grow Broadband – We will continue to invest in advanced network enhancements, such as the continued deployment of fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) technology, in order to meet increased usage demands in a multi-media rich environment and to improve DSL network performance. FTTN will enable speeds of up to 26 Mbps. In the future, as consumer demand for bandwidth-intensive applications increases, we believe that FTTN bandwidth speeds can be increased to more than 40 Mbps through techniques such as shortening VDSL loop lengths and bonding twisted-pair copper telephone lines. Our objective is to migrate high-speed Internet customers to FTTN based on demand and willingness to pay for more speed. We also aim to develop and launch targeted marketing initiatives to further grow IP connectivity sales among business customers and to more aggressively monetize usage of our broadband networks. At year-end, Bell had deployed 4,828 neighbourhood nodes through its FTTN program.
--
Need-based health care not greed-based health care.


DKS
Damn Kidney Stones
Premium,ExMod 2002
join:2001-03-22
Owen Sound, ON
clubs:
·Bell Sympatico

reply to sbrook
Gets better

quote:
Data
High-speed Internet net activations (thousands) (3) (4) 2007 - 124 2006 - 154 2005 - 254
High-speed Internet subscribers (thousands) (3) (4) 2007 - 2,004 2006 - 1,877 2005 - 1,723

(3) In 2007, we reduced total net activations for 2007 by 11,000 and for 2006 by 3,000 to correct for customer churn adjustments in 2007 and 2006.

(4) In 2007, our high-speed Internet subscriber base was increased by 18,000 to adjust for prior-year deactivations related to a major upgrade of our
order management system. In addition, our high-speed Internet subscriber base was decreased by 15,000 to adjust for the removal of customers who had
no network usage in 2007.


I don't think we have seen those kind of exact numbers before, either.
--
Need-based health care not greed-based health care.


sbrook
Premium,Mod
join:2001-12-14
H0H 0H0
·Rogers Hi-Speed

Host:
Rogers
Bell Canada
reply to DKS
I'm actually astounded at the amount of information they leaked in that single paragraph.

1) We can't recover costs due to competitive pricing.

2) We need to increase our infrastructure for video

3) We've slowed down (paced) FTTN (ADSL2+) roll out.

4) We're throttling

5) We changed the packages knowing they'd piss customer off (Total Internet) and these new packages were clearly to reduce costs.

6) We may not even achieve the reduction in bandwidth they wanted on the internet side in spite of throttling and Total Internet packaging.


DKS
Damn Kidney Stones
Premium,ExMod 2002
join:2001-03-22
Owen Sound, ON
clubs:
·Bell Sympatico


1 edit
reply to andyb
And another caution:

quote:
Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations expressed in or implied by our forward-looking statements include: general economic conditions; failure to achieve our business objectives; the intensity of competitive activity and the increase in wireless competitive activity that could result from Industry Canada’s decision to license additional wireless spectrum; our ability to respond to technological changes and rapidly offer new products and services; events affecting the functionality of, and our ability to protect, maintain and replace, our networks, information technology (IT) systems and softwares; labour disruptions; the potential adverse effects on our Internet business of the significant increase in broadband demand; competitive risks related to potential changes in foreign ownership restrictions; events affecting the operations of our service providers operating outside Canada; our ability to raise the capital we need to implement our business plan; the consummation of the Privatization (as defined immediately following this section under Privatization of BCE Inc.) is still subject to a number of terms and conditions including the receipt of regulatory approval, resolution of any appeal filed by the debenture holders which affects the approval of the Bell Canada Enterprises 2007 Annual Report 3 Management’s Discussion and Analysis Arrangement (as defined immediately following this section under Privatization of BCE Inc.), and contractual termination rights; our ability to discontinue certain traditional services as necessary to improve capital and operating efficiencies; regulatory initiatives or proceedings, litigation and changes in laws or regulations; increased regulations banning the use of wireless devices while driving; launch and in-orbit risks of satellites used by Bell ExpressVu Limited Partnership (Bell ExpressVu); increased pension fund contributions; and health concerns about radio frequency emissions from wireless devices. These and other risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from ourexpectations expressed in or implied by our forward-looking tatements are discussed throughout this MD&A and,
in particular, under Our Competitive Environment, Our Regulatory Environment and Risks that Could Affect Our Business and Results.
--
Need-based health care not greed-based health care.


DKS
Damn Kidney Stones
Premium,ExMod 2002
join:2001-03-22
Owen Sound, ON
clubs:
·Bell Sympatico

reply to sbrook
said by sbrook See Profile :

Normally they don't report so specifically on specific business operations like this in shareholder reports. We'd normally expect to see this simply as "due to operational limitations in the internet service we expect higher than normal churn." Thisis very specific.
It also supports your contention that Bell reached a crunch point with the projected roll-out of IPTV.
--
Need-based health care not greed-based health care.


Arbalister

join:2007-11-24
St Catharines, ON
·TekSavvy Solutions..

reply to intelcurio
said by intelcurio :

So as to see this as a revelation and an admission of guilt of any sort is highly naive
Not true. Read it again. To paraphrase: We might not be able to roll out FTTN fast enough, throttling and rate changes might create backlash, and our competing ISPs might benefit from our losses. Prepared March 8th. A week later they start throttling competitors. Thinking it wasn't a direct result of this statement is naive.

justsometech

join:2003-05-08
h3h4h4
·Bell Sympatico

reply to justsometech
"In addition to these traditional
video competitors, certain traditional telephone companies
have recently launched or are contemplating the
launch of IPTV services that would compete with Bell
ExpressVu in certain markets."

I think throttling and very limiting caps would prevent competition against express vu

"However, growth of end-user technologies such as
VoIP is continuing to increase pressure on some legacy
product lines" legacy being POTS lines... again throttling will mitigate this problem for Bell...

Page 53 "The significant increase in broadband demand could have an adverse effect on our business and financial results." It even has its own freakin title- so whats a company to do? lower intesive apps (why would they btoher to exand *sarcasm*


sbrook
Premium,Mod
join:2001-12-14
H0H 0H0
·Rogers Hi-Speed

Host:
Rogers
Bell Canada

1 edit
reply to intelcurio
Normally they don't report so specifically on specific business operations like this in shareholder reports. We'd normally expect to see this simply as "due to operational limitations in the internet service we expect higher than normal churn." Thisis very specific.
Forums » O Canada! » Canadian » Bell CanadaInteresting blog post re Bell Throttling »
« Bell to remove throttle and compensate users.  
page: 1 · 2


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