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For more than a year now, Canadian ISPs, net neutrality advocacy groups, and the CRTC have been battling over the issue of internet traffic management. ISPs, like Bell Canada and Rogers, argue that they need to manage their network traffic in order to stop BitTorrent users from hogging all the bandwidth; net neutrality advocacy groups, on the other side of the issue, believe that the ISPs should treat all internet traffic equally, with the limited exceptions of viruses and spam. Groups like SaveOurNet.ca also argue that Canadian ISPs are inflating the issue in order to gain the leverage necessary to create a lucrative tiered internet service, so that they can charge Canadians more for their access. Finally, somewhere in the middle, the CRTC has been listening to both sides of the argument.
So far this month, net neutrality advocacy groups have been rather successful in drumming up online support for their cause. During the CRTC’s online consultations in February, SaveOurNet.ca claims that more than eleven thousand people submitted comments decrying the throttling practices of Canada's ISPs. On the Liberal Party’s website voice.liberal.ca—where Canadians can submit and vote on issues of importance to them—the issues of internet infrastructure and net neutrality are ranked second and third, respectively, in terms of votes. TekSavvy, an Ontario-based internet wholesaler, has also taken up the cause and has been openly attacking the policies of its provider Bell Canada: on April 14, TekSavvy CEO Rocky Gaudrault sent around an email urging TekSavvy customers and Canadians to ask the CRTC to deny Bell Canada a tariff application that would allow the company to impose Usage-Based Billing on its wholesale customers.
Due to the overwhelming interest in the subject, the CRTC recently set up another online public consultation, to hear what Canadians had to say about internet traffic management practices, and so far, hundreds have responded. If you still want to weigh in on the issue, you'll have to do so soon, as the consultation period ends on April 30.
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I switched from Bell to TekSavvy to get away from Bell's restrictions. Now it looks like they'll be imposing them through teksavvy by imposing usage based billing, even though a previous ruling forced Bell to offer wholesale pricing to resellers.
I wish there was some option to permanently get out from under the thumb of Bell and Rogers. It's oppressive under here.
Until then, I'll keep writing the CRTC and my MP.
This whole issue seems very interesting to me... I know there is the traditional attitude regarding universal freedom and lack of control on the the old inter-webs, but isn't it kind of funny to lobby your MP on behalf of BitTorrent use which has got to be at least 90% composed of illegal file sharing of movies and music?
In some jobs it's easy to need to transfer 3+ GB per day from home to work and back. Thanks for the assumption.
If you think this is about Bit Torrent, you've been had like so many others. This is simply maintaining control of the medium. Now with Youtube, CTV.ca(Hulu.com in the states) and VoIP, TV and phone, traditional cash cows, are becoming obsolete. Both Bell and Rogers realised a long time ago, they need to maintain control of the pipe, and by using Torrents as a facade, they can do this.
Do you have any idea how much bandwidth Rogers HD On Demand and Bell's On Demand service use? That's why they need to minimize Internet traffic. And they worry that they won't be able to sell their On Demand and Cable TV services if we have fast, reliable, un-capped, un-throttled bandwidth (and access to legit sites like Hulu).
It's about control and money, like it always is.
Most Canadians have five options for high-speed Internet access from their homes: the telephone line, the cable, cellphone (high-speed available only in some areas to date), the wireless service provided by the Bell/Rogers-owned Inukshuk Network to some 150 communities, and satellite. Five options may seem like a lot, but four of them are controlled by the telephone company / cable company oligopoly, and the remaining one, satellite, is more expensive and has performance limitations so is generally used only by rural residents who have no better alternative.
So we're largely at the hands of an oligopoly. Companies like TekSavvy offer no real alternative: they just resell the phone company's network.
In Europe and the USA, the situations are very different: Ars Technica has an excellent article about Canadian broadband in relation to Europe and the USA.
So, CRTC to the rescue? It's not exactly effective. As far back as 1996 it ruled that the cable companies had to allow third-party ISPs access to the cable. The cable companies have never complied, claiming technical limitations which are clearly fictional, causing the CRTC to create other rulings which have been equally useless.
So, individual activists instead? Unfortunately the activists are overlooking the important issues in favour of the juvenile "don't throttle anything, including BitTorrent". Although BitTorrent has excellent legitimate uses, its heaviest use is for downloading pirated movies, files so huge that they swamp the Internet just like spam swamps legitimate email. The recent Swedish law permitting pirates to be identified has apparently resulted in an immediate 40% reduction in Internet traffic there. Yet this is the cause that the vast majority of activists agitate for. Most of the ones I know seem to be under the impression that the Internet is an unlimited and nearly free resource. It isn't.
So, the politicians? I see no evidence that any of the parties consider this a priority issue.
Who will stand up for those of us who don't pirate anything and just want well-performing Internet access in a truly competitive environment?
What good would cable ISPs be if Rogers is allowed to follow Bell's lead and put the strangle hold on cable reseller clients? If the CRTC does rule in the favour of TekSavvy/et al against Bell, it puts the kibosh on any future moves Rogers might make when and if cable resellers become a presence in the market.
It's actually quite easy to lobby about this issue without bringing up BitTorrent at all (yes I know there are legit uses but lets forget about that for a moment).
The number of legitimate digital distribution services is expanding, both in popularity and in number of providers.
A household using Rogers Express (capped at 60GB/month, both ways), for example, could potentially purchase 30-40 GB of content in a month (music, TV shows, movies, games, porn), not leaving much room for software and OS updates, anti-virus definitions, VOIP, online gaming, VPN tunnels to the office... the list goes on.
Hmm, maybe I should write to my MP...
In some jobs it's easy to need to transfer 3+ GB per day from home to work and back. Thanks for the assumption.
Bad example, mind you. Business Internet access isn't P2P-throttled.
So we're largely at the hands of an oligopoly. Companies like TekSavvy offer no real alternative: they just resell the phone company's network. In Europe and the USA, the situations are very different
This applies to much of Europe. Certainly not to the U.S. -- where the situation is different, sure, in that the FCC does not require telephone companies to resell their networks at a discount as the basis for ISPs to run a business. Unlike the CRTC (and many European regulators), which does.
If we went the U.S. route, there would be no TekSavvy to begin with.
You seem to be a fan of TekSavvy. Unfortunately, it only provides a false illusion of competition. TekSavvy does nothing but resell Bell's services, yet it wants to be exempt from the same throttling that Bell applies to its own home customers! Come on.
Resale is no basis for actual competition. If TekSavvy were a real competitor it wouldn't resell the Bell Nexxia network but would put its own connections into the central offices and attach directly to the customer line. Then it could either throttle or not as it saw fit. And if Bell has a problem with letting others attach to its lines, that's when we should use the European solution and force Bell to divest those lines to a separate company that would treat Bell and TekSavvy as equals.
You are wrong about "Come on." Bell has been told they have to offer wholesale prices, i.e. no throttling.
If there were a third party that offered reasonable unlimited internet I'd switch right away.
I was surprised when I received the email from TekSavvy: the deadline to file was that night at midnight. A bit short notice: too late to get it on Slashdot, and I don't think Michael Geist even mentioned it on his blog (haven't checked since that day).
Net neutrality is not just about the right of pimply-faced teenagers to download pirated movies and music without ISPs interfering, as much as Bell and Rogers would like you to believe. Whether you like it or not, it is a slippery slope that begins with throttling P2P. ISPs may ask media companies to pay them in order to deliver their content to end users faster. ISPs that are owned by large media houses may put different restrictions on content that is delivered from their servers (such as larger download caps, higher max transfer rates) than from other servers. Some of this is already happening in parts of the world. Net neutrality is a must. ISPs must adhere to common carrier status, and have no business prioritizing some types of content over others. They must simply deliver the service that they advertised. Claims of network congestion necessitating throttling are nonsense, and indicative of either poor planning, false advertising, or darker motives. If they have trouble sticking to "unlimited" download caps, then they must switch to charging users based on the number of GB transferred, not suddenly decreasing their speeds. Analogous behavior from your hydro company or water supplier would never be tolerated, so why should we tolerate it from ISPs?