A few weeks ago, Bell Canada thought it would be a good idea to degrade the quality of the bandwidth they sold wholesalers by throttling it before it reached competitor networks. They also thought it would be a good idea initially not to tell any of those competitors and customers they'd be doing this. The result has been a several-week debate over the anticompetitive practice, which essentially prevents competitors from offering a superior product to Bell's throttled Sympatico service.
This week that debate heads to Canada's telecommunications watchdog the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), which has been bombarded by user complaints, many of which originated in our forums. According to the Ottawa Citizen, the CRTC will begin deliberations tomorrow to determine if Bell's "bandwidth throttling" should stop immediately until government policy is set.
Meanwhile, Teksavvy CEO Rocky Gaudrault has posted to our forums in the hopes of organizing a rally against Bell Canada's tactics and in favor of network neutrality. As it stands, they're looking to organize a peaceful protest on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on April 29, from 1PM to 6PM. Keep an eye on the above-linked thread if you'd like to participate.
"the anticompetitive practice, which essentially prevents competitors from offering a superior product to Bell's throttled Sympatico service."
I don't understand that part of Karl's editorial. If Bell is throttling the bandwidth they retail, how is it anti-competitive if they do the same thing to their wholesale market? They're doing the same thing to others that they do to themselves, right?
By making it so they cannot provide superior service than Sympatico, like they used to.
It still seems like an overstatement to me. If Bell didn't throttle its own service I could understand a claim of anti competition (like MS using unpublished APIs to give itself an edge). But, they're doing the same thing they do to themself.
If they're supposed to provide more to the wholesale market than they do to themself, then *anything* would be anti-competitive. If they don't upgrade to the latest equipment, etc.
It still seems like an overstatement to me. If Bell didn't throttle its own service I could understand a claim of anti competition (like MS using unpublished APIs to give itself an edge). But, they're doing the same thing they do to themself. ...
Mark
see if this helps:
* the original market = nobody throttles anything, all equal
* next stage = Bell throttles their retail customers for their own (not very good) reasons, but wholesalers do not; wholesalers can use "we do not throttle" for competitive advantage
* terminal stage = Bell throttles everyone, including wholesalers; they have just taken away the ability of wholesalers to offer a better service, which is anti-competitive
fortunately, we don't have this problem in the U.S., as the FCC has destroyed the wholesale market.
Nightshade Beware the Blue Rabbit Premium join:2002-05-26 Salem, OR
edit: April 23rd, @01:50PM
It is anticompetitive because by throttling their wholesale market they are taking away the choice of their resellers to throttle the traffic or not. The fact of the matter is what the ISP resellers buy they own. It shouldn't be up to the wholeseller how the reseller buys and markets their product to the customer. It's all fine and good what bell does to their retail market because the customers have a choice to use their service or not, but when it comes to a wholeseller telling the reseller what is good for the market, then you will run into problems because not all retail markets are the same. That is where a lot of our friends in the north are really getting pissed about. -- True Happiness Must Come From Within
That's not what Karl's editorial says. "prevents competitors from offering a superior product to Bell's throttled Sympatico service." That's why it didn't sound "anti-competitive."
That's not what Karl's editorial says. "prevents competitors from offering a superior product to Bell's throttled Sympatico service." That's why it didn't sound "anti-competitive."
Mark
A superior product would be a product that is not throttled. Not sure how the dots aren't connecting on this for you.
That's not what Karl's editorial says. "prevents competitors from offering a superior product to Bell's throttled Sympatico service." That's why it didn't sound "anti-competitive."
Mark
Umm, what exactly is not clear here ? Bell Sympatico service is throttled. This is bad. Their wholesale service was not untill recently when Bell decided to throttle it because they saw their Sympatico client close their accounts and move to third party ISPs. Those 3rd party ISPs are no throttled so their service is as bad as Sympatico.
Do you see now the anti-competitive and hair raising move by Bell ?
KrK Heavy Artillery For The Little Guy Premium join:2000-01-17 Tulsa, OK ·Cox HSI ·AT&T Southwest
said by amigo_boy :
That's not what Karl's editorial says. "prevents competitors from offering a superior product to Bell's throttled Sympatico service." That's why it didn't sound "anti-competitive."
Ok think of it like this. Let's say the only grocery store in town is a small, run down dump with high prices, bad service, and poor selection.
You decide you're going to open a much better store in town. Modern, spacious, well lit, huge selection, good prices, friendly service. That's called competition.
So you do it...
... but then your competitors at the old Sleazy-Mart use their influence and power at Town Hall to pass a law that says your store has to be the same exact size, design, carry the same products, and have the same service as theirs. You don't want to, but you have to because they control the laws.
That would be anti-competitive, and while an analogy, it sorta fits what bell is doing to the wholesalers. -- "Regulatory capitalism is when companies invest in lawyers, lobbyists, and politicians, instead of plant, people, and customer service." - former FCC Chairman William Kennard (A real FCC Chairman, unlike the current Corporate Spokesperson in the job!)
Other ISPs in Bell's service area (Videotron's cable service in Quebec) are not throttled.
Bell is, in effect, preventing wholesalers from effectively competing with unthrottled providers like Videotron.
This is similar to a big store selling stuff below cost to drive other smaller stores out of business.
Bell introduces throttling, Videotron doesn't. Bell loses a few customers, but they have many and can afford it. Also, they lose mostly the less profitable customers. Bell survives.
The wholesalers, though, they're small. They can't really afford to lose many customers, and their core user base tends to be much more affected by the throttling. They can't afford to take the hit, and go bankrupt.
End result? Even though Bell is throttling their own customers, Bell drives the wholesalers out of business by offering them up to the wolves (Videotron). Unable to effectively compete in the marketplace, and unable to take the hit of lost business due to their size and different customer demographic, the wholesalers tank!
If all ISPs throttled, this would not be the case. But since some major ISPs do not throttle, Bell is preventing the wholesalers from competing against non-throttled ISPs. That is anti-competitive.
The Flash You don't win friends with salad Premium join:2002-10-17 Canada
Bell is throttling a regulated relationship with it's wholesalers... The service the wholesalers buy from Bell is what comes before it becoming the internet.
Exactly... ISP has its own pipe to the internet, which is currently being underused because of the throttling by Bell Canada at the point where the traffic is collected for both Bell Canada AND other ISP's. Bell believes that since this is part of their infrastructure (i.e. leased wholesale), they can throttle it, along with the competition because its their network, even though its leased out wholesale. -- Canada = Hollywood North
I guess you could see it that way... Forced baseline competition... I.E "We won't allow competitors to have less restrictions than we impose on ourselves", forcing the playing field to the lowest common denominator.
'Real' comptition would allow the competition to make use of their purchased bandwidth, and not compete at the throttled level (ie. sounds more like the days of regulation to me). -- Canada = Hollywood North
I guess you could see it that way... Forced baseline competition... I.E "We won't allow competitors to have less restrictions than we impose on ourselves", forcing the playing field to the lowest common denominator.
'Real' comptition would allow the competition to make use of their purchased bandwidth, and not compete at the throttled level (ie. sounds more like the days of regulation to me).
I agree. The anti-competitive angle may be that Bell is involved in both wholesale and retail. If they weren't involved in retail they'd have more incentive to provide higher bandwidth on an open market (without concern for the effect it would have on their retail activities).
But, a lot of businesses do that. Apple comes to mind. It's almost impossible to find deep discounts on iPods. If Bell is being anti-competitive for forcing its retail interests onto the wholesale market, I think *a lot* of businesses would be guilty of that.
If Bell has an exclusive on Canada's network infrastructure that would make it different than the Apple example. It would be a question of whether it should be a public utility (which could be worse).
Exactly... when you run and sell both parts of the infrastructure, you're not tempted to make profit off one for the other... you want it all. -- Canada = Hollywood North
it's not so much anti-competitive as ILLEGAL/a breach of contract, since TSI's SLA's with Bell have no mention of p2p throttling, therefore they (Bell) have no right whatsoever to touch TSI's traffic. Over in the US, that'd be akin to Verizon implementing a Sandvine-like throttling technology on my wholesale Gig-E or metro ethernet line, and telling me it's to fulfill 'reasonable network management'.
KrK Heavy Artillery For The Little Guy Premium join:2000-01-17 Tulsa, OK ·Cox HSI ·AT&T Southwest
said by amigo_boy :
I don't understand that part of Karl's editorial. If Bell is throttling the bandwidth they retail, how is it anti-competitive if they do the same thing to their wholesale market? They're doing the same thing to others that they do to themselves, right?
Bell began throttling their users. Their users, hated it, and were pissed off, so (rightly so) they left Bell and went to third party competitors like TekSavvy. Bell, faced with a massive loss of customers, decided the way to nip this in the bud was to throttle the last mile they control between the customers and the wholesale ISP's. Result is they made everyone else's ISP service as bad as theirs.... No longer a reason to leave, if they are all throttled the same, eh? Yes, it's VERY anti-competitive. -- "Regulatory capitalism is when companies invest in lawyers, lobbyists, and politicians, instead of plant, people, and customer service." - former FCC Chairman William Kennard (A real FCC Chairman, unlike the current Corporate Spokesperson in the job!)
I don't understand that part of Karl's editorial. If Bell is throttling the bandwidth they retail, how is it anti-competitive if they do the same thing to their wholesale market? They're doing the same thing to others that they do to themselves, right? Mark
BCE, the parent of Bell (telco), Bell Nexxia (wholesale network operator), Symaptico (ISP), and CTVGlobeMedia (content creator/provider/TV network/print publisher/newspaper), generically "Bell"
The ISP's are purchasing Gig-E pipes from Bell with guaranteed throughput between the DSLAMs and the NAP. This is in effect a 'leased line' in the old parlance, or PVC - a private virtual circuit.
Bell has no legal right to throttle the circuit under the terms of service.
Moreover, they are using DPI equipment to inspect each packet on the PVC, which is akin to the USPS illegally opening your mail, reading it, and then deciding how long to delay delivering to you based on the content, ranging from no delay through to never delivering. Bell is doing this without a warrant.
The throttle/DPI is occuring from 4pm - 2am, which is prime television viewing time. It is widely thought that Bell is implementing this throttling to create 'space' for their own imminent IPTV launch.
The CRTC (same as your FCC) has mandated through various 'tariffs' that all telco's and cable operators provide wholesale access to any ISP in order to foster a competitive internet access regieme in Canada. There is noting in the tariffs which permit a wholesale provider to delay or inspect traffic on these 'leased lines'.
Imagine for a moment that Bank of America had a similar network provided by ATT and configed similarly as one of the ISP's - branches connected via DSL to the local telco central office (CO), thence via leased capacity to a NAP and then on to BofA's datacenter.
Imagine that ATT did DPI on all the capacity between the CO and the NAP and delayed or dropped all encrypted traffic. Imagine dropped or seriously degraded banking or stock trading.
Imagine that BofA used Vonage for voice traffic over the same DSL link (implausible I know, but bear with me), and VoIP calls had so much jitter as to be unusable or 911 calls could not be connected.
Imagine that authorized BofA employees could not get connected from home or hotels via the corporate VPN due to the discarding of encrypted packets.
What do you think BofA would do to ATT?
All the above is happening in Ontario and Quebec to low millions of both individual and SME business customers because of Bell's actions. Do you get it what the issue is now?
Throttling is only viable if pricing model is incorrect...
This whole situation screams that something about the pricing model Bell is using for wholesale DSL is off. Internet backbone carriers are always happy when you use larger amounts of bandwidth, because more bandwidth = higher service fees, which in turn generates revenue to fund additional network growth. The larger pool of capacity you have, the more economical it is to operate. (higher capacity when you are billing based on usage is the gift that keeps on giving) We're not talking about the last mile where there are legitimate technical restrictions limiting the growth of bandwidth -- you can scale an ATM cloud to be whatever you need it to be.
Re: Throttling is only viable if pricing model is incorrect...
just look at the price of 100MB in germany or sweden then tell me wtf is wrong and anti-competitive. WHO in caanda would want to given the current climate try and start a FULL ISP, NO ONE, cause the others have such a lock on hte market
Re: Throttling is only viable if pricing model is incorrect...
It doesn't matter if the 3rd party ISPs paid Bell 99.9% of what they take in from customers. Either the money covers the cost of operating the network, or it doesn't. If it doesn't you have two basic choices: adjust the traffic to match the price, or adjust the price to match the traffic.
Re: Throttling is only viable if pricing model is incorrect...
"...adjust the traffic to match the price, or adjust the price to match the traffic."
Since both Sympatico customers and 3rd party resellers pay full price for bandwidth they're supposed to have (but never get), then the THROTTLING would be such an "adjustment" that should never have been made.
Re: Throttling is only viable if pricing model is incorrect...
Maintaining the DSL equipment is only part of the equation; the ATM network that connects everything together is a major cost as well.
Just to provide a reference for pricing, business customers paying for private ATM network VCs (admittedly more expensive due to design) are paying $200/mo for T1 access per site plus $200/mo for only 256k ATM frame port services on those lines. PVC costs are added onto that depending on the level of service requested (largely variable bit rate).
ATM isn't as cheap to build out as other straight IP technologies, because the interfaces need additional SAR (segmentation and reassembly) features to deal with breaking traffic down into 53-byte ATM cells.
This is a strong reason why a wholesale provider should not be allowed to also be a consumer provider of the same product. The Canadians should force Bell to spin off the wholesale side, imo.
How exactly would we be able to force them to spin off the wholesale side? The wholesale side IS Bell Canada. I think you mean the retail side.
The wholesale side is NOT Bell Canada. The wholesale side is BCE Nexxia which is a separate company, a US corporation at that. That makes the current situation that much worse.
I really think we are missing the big picture here.
Bell is limiting "content" it deems disruptive to its network....P2P is not the biggest bandwidth hop...its video streaming over plain old http.
Whats next for Bell....what "content" will they slow down or block??
Its any competitive because Bell and Rogers dont want you using your internet service to phone people or watch TV (they both supply those services also)
I think Bell will get all the concesions it wants from the CRTC . Look Bell has very deep pockets and can buy/lobby the present Government/bunch of crooks . When has any Canadian Gov sided with its citizens . Corporations do what they want in this country . Take recycling , buy anything and look at the packaging . Way too much . Who pays too recycle it . You and me . Does the Gov care no . They can mandate less packaging but dont . Why because they work for the companies . Another example , the dollar has risen to approx parity with the us dollar . Buy a extra value hamburger at Mcdonnalds in the Us . One dollar , here 1.39 . Vacuum Sears Can $500 , Us $300 . Here anything from the Gov on this , No . They dont care . Money talks .
CRTC Debates Bell Canada Throttling
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Re: Throttling is only viable if pricing model is incorrect...
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