May 23, 2008
Got Bell's Number
To the casual net surfer it might seem that Bell’s newly launched online video store is just another way the telecommunications giant is competing with rampant P2P file-sharers.
“Rent or buy thousands of DVD-quality full-length movies, TV shows and music videos,” the website boasts, adding that files can be viewed through portable media players (but not iPods. They're, um, actually not viewable on any Apple machines). “Your favourite videos available 24/7 to download and watch within minutes.”
Hold up—minutes?
Earlier this year, Bell and Rogers made headlines when they rolled out controversial internet bandwidth shaping (“throttling”) measures that would apparently alleviate congestion and additional expenses caused by high-bandwidth users. While throttling might be a non-issue for those who prefer watching hard copy DVDs from Blockbuster (or Pacific Mall), these policies didn't just hit the high school bootlegger: they choked smaller ISPs that buy wholesale bandwidth from Bell.
So it’s slightly suspicious when a company currently being investigated by the CRTC for throttling starts pushing a high-speed download portal of its own (this service was formally available one year ago in a beta format called Videoplay.ca), effectively peddling multimedia content for profit while restricting access to alternative sources.
Jack Kapica at the Globe & Mail makes the point that Bell’s attempt to monopolize video and song downloads interferes with the market. Leaving aside the ethical debate over P2P downloading, this discussion centres on the more urgent issue of net neutrality and the continuing greed of Canadian telecommunications providers who have failed to keep up with changes in Internet usage. Extreme-bandwidth users are in the minority, so it's unfair that policies targeted to thwart them should affect the majority. It's also unfair that consumers are slowly being swindled out of choice. The online video store might be a great option for some Bell users but—tied in with the whole throttling thing—its launch has bigger implications for the internet in Canada.
Photo by johntrainor.
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If I thought it was possible for the CRTC to side with consumers against a comm. company I'd say Bell just sealed their own fate.
IIRC, Bell's own numbers show that 100% of customers are only using 55% of the total bandwidth Bell's system can handle. (Read it on Slashdot last weekend.)
Eh. The sooner ISPs all get on board throttling current bittorrent ports, the sooner bittorrent software will switch to using port 443.
Um. Call me crazy, but (with a little technical know-how and the right torrent program) you can change your Bittorrent port to whatever you want under Bell, Rogers, and any other ISP. Doing so makes no significant difference in whether you get throttled or not. Changing ports is not a solution to the problem at all.
Indeed. While they used to throttle bittorrent ports, now they essentially monitor the transfer of information. Anything sent via bitorrent will be picked up and throttled.
At first the simple solution was encrypting your bittorrents. It was a simple option in most torrent programs. Rogers quickly just throttled any encrypted traffic to combat this loophole.
Rogers has been doing this for a while now. Bell only recently. I've gotten the impression however, because the two systems are quite different, they've both had to go about it in different ways.
Initially Rogers had to address the throttling on a neighbourhood by neighbourhood basis, as they require a physical modification done to their switching stations. I'm not sure if this is still the case, but seeing as at my new apartment I get pretty good speeds, I think it is still true.
Bell on the other hand was able to apply it system wide without any physical changes made to their infrastructure. Literally surprising people overnight with the throttling.
Sadly, your best bet for the time being is to go with Rogers (Or a company that buys bandwidth from Rogers) and hope you live in an area not yet affected by the throttling. Maybe the government will do something about it before it gets to your area.
So they throttled all encrypted traffic then. Well, that is evil. I guess they can sort of get away with it since people probably won't notice much of a slowdown for shopping apps.
Does this mean I will get throttled when buying movies through iTunes on my Mac? Sounds like an added "benefit" for Bell to try an compete against a superior service for those actually paying for their content.
Why can't Bell made their service Mac-compatible? Apple uses the most open standards there are, and consumers are moving to Mac in droves.
Bell fails to service its constituency once again.
Cheers,
Tuds
Are there any other ISPs to go with that dont have this issue?