Techdirt, Slashdot and Canadian law Professor Michael Geist all discuss our report yesterday on Bell Canada's decision to start throttling traffic of their residential wholesalers before it hits their networks without telling those ISPs they were doing so. The result was a flurry of angry users, and executives at major ISPs who had to explain why they "broke" promises not to throttle traffic. Popular Canadian ISP Teksavvy met with Bell Canada today, and CEO Rocky Gaudrault says Bell is confirming the practice:In other words, Bell Canada is using their monopoly power to degrade the quality of the bandwidth headed to ISP partners. The move makes those competitors immediately less of a threat -- given Sympatico throttles their own customers and wouldn't want a competitor offering better service.

It's dumbfoundingly anti-competitive, and Bell is claiming it's their right under contract, which likely leaves those ISPs with little legal recourse. Our users, however, are discussing their options, including a letter writing campaign to the Canadian competition bureau.

Meanwhile, Bell Sympatico is fielding complaints from their own broadband customers about the throttling. One user offers the call center talking points Bell reps are being told to use against our forum regulars, who are calling in to claim the throttling constitutes a material change and nullifies their long-term contract:Reps are subsequently told that engaging in legal discussion with the customer is "strictly prohibited." As usual with North America's largest providers, they're all too happy to box users in with miles of legalese, but they're not too keen when you try to use their own fine print against them.

See additional user discussion in our Teksavvy, Bell Sympatico and Canadian broadband forums.