Bell moves to limit internet downloads of competitor ISPs

(CBC.ca) - Bell Canada Inc. is moving to impose download limits on customers of independent internet providers, an act the smaller firms say is designed to eliminate broadband competition and prevent the introduction of new television services.

The Montreal-based company, which cut its own Sympatico customers off from unlimited downloading last year, has proposed extending that plan to firms renting portions of its network in order to provide their own services. That would include a number of smaller wholesale ISP customers such as Chatham, Ont.-based TekSavvy Solutions Inc., Cobourg, Ont.-based Eagle.ca and Mississauga-based Acanac Inc.

The limits would range from two gigabytes per month for customers with slower connections of 512 kilobits per second up to 60 GB for those with the faster speeds of five megabits per second, according to Acanac president Paul Louro. Customers who exceed those limits would incur extra charges, much like cellphone subscribers do when they surpass their monthly minutes.

READ MORE HERE [ Source: CBC.ca, Peter Nowak ]

Bell’s internet throttling is like reading people’s mail, ISPs say

(CBC.ca) - Bell Canada Inc.’s slowing of internet speeds is the equivalent of the post office opening people’s mail and deciding when they should get their letters, a group of small service providers have said in their final volley at the company.

The Canadian Association of Internet Providers, a group of 55 companies that rent portions of Bell’s network to provide their own broadband services, made its last plea Wednesday to regulators to force Bell to end its speed throttling.

READ MORE HERE [ Source: CBC.ca, Peter Nowak ]

Bell’s internet throttling illegal, Google says

Just when you thought nobody was listening about Net Neutrality - the search engine giant Google Inc. steps up to the plate and throws a Bell a legal hard ball. What do you think?

(CBC) - Google Inc. says Bell Canada Inc. is breaking Canadian telecommunications law by slowing certain internet traffic, and is urging the CRTC to take action against the company.

READ MORE HERE [ Source: CBC.ca, Peter Nowak ]

The CRTC should stop Bell Canada’s throttling and hold a Public Hearing

(SaveOurNet.ca) - CIPPIC has made a submission on behalf of the Campaign for Democratic Media (“CDM”) and in support of the “SaveOurNet.ca” coalition that is currently forming around issues including that raised by CAIP in this proceeding.

READ MORE HERE [ Source: SaveOurNet.ca, Steve Anderson ]

Groups Ask CRTC for Public Proceeding Examining P2P Throttling

(SaveOurNet.ca) - Issue Goes Well Beyond Current Dispute Involving CAIP and Bell -- July 3, 2008 -- The Campaign for Democratic Media (CDM) today called upon the CRTC to initiate a public proceeding to examine the discriminatory traffic-shaping policies of Canada’s facilities-based Internet Service Providers. CDM issued the call in a submission to the CRTC in support of the Canadian Alliance of Internet Service Provider’s (CAIP) application to have Bell cease and desist from its throttling of P2P internet traffic.

READ MORE HERE [ Source: SaveOurNet.ca, Steve Anderson ]

Canada must adopt legislation to stop Bell Canada from shortchanging the public, says coalition

The Campaign for Democratic Media! is outraged at Bell Canada's recent announcement that it will begin throttling Internet service providers (ISPs) starting April 7 - a policy uncovered and made official after Canadian ISPs realized they were being shortchanged by the telecommunications giant which had begun selectively limiting the ISPs' bandwidth.

READ MORE HERE

Net Neutrality and Education

Jeff Rybak makes the case for network neutrality from an education perspective:

Net Neutrality protects the availability and the independence of free education. Without principles of Net Neutrality, education available on-line may either be crippled at the whim of those controlling the infrastructure of the ‘net, or else be forced to partner with huge corporations in order to survive. Even if we believe, for a moment, in the benevolence of large corporations and assume that they’ll give a break to do-gooder efforts, this still requires educators to get in bed with corporations. And no one should ever be comfortable with that – certainly not as a requirement to simply function.

Read Jeff's full post: http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/2008/06/25/net-neutrality-and-educ...

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Sandvine calls net neutrality “laughable,” defends filtering

David Caputo, CEO of Sandvine Deep Packet Inspection ("DPI") technology, insists,"it's going to be laughable in the next two or three years that people used to say all packets should be treated equally."

READ MORE HERE

What to do with the Spectrum surplus?

It was recently pointed out by Michael Geist that the Federal Government's spectrum auction will rake in an extra $2.5 billion over the $1.5 billion expected to be generated.

Three options were offered by Geist: fund education programs for the upcoming anti-spam and data-breach legislative initiatives; stimulate municipal wifi access projects; and/or commit to a national broadband strategy to ensure all Canadians have access to high-speed networks.

A fourth option is to spend a fraction of the $2.5 on a public consultation focused on the issues of network neutrality...

READ MORE HERE

Competition Bureau says ‘net regulation Must be addressed

Today the head of Canada's Competition Bureau, Sheridan Scott, said that the time for addressing the topic of internet regulation is now. "The developments raise the urgency of a question that public policy has been tip-toeing around for a decade or more, but which we now have to confront head-on: should the government regulate the Internet?"

Ms. Scott professed her own weariness about about government intervention, worrying that it would add costs and administrative complexities for companies and stated that she would put her confidence in the market. But she also pointed to Industry Canada's ongoing auction of wireless spectrum as a model for policy makers who wish to engage in market intervention. She noted that Industry Canada had clear objectives for setting aside a portion of the spectrum for newcomers: greater competition, more innovation, better services and more choice.

The current broadband climate is ripe for a similar intervention--the competition for broadband and cellphone service providers in Canada is not robust. Industry Canada recognized that measures were needed to level the playing field in the cellphone market, and acted by reserving 40% of the spectrum for bidding newcomers only.

But in the context of internet provision, the situation is complicated by the fact that Canadian consumers care just as much about competition in the area of content provision as they do for how much they will pay the ISP for access to it.

Leaving the carriers to control the pipes, throttling as they see fit, will prohibit that competition from realizing the very market forces Ms. Scott has trumpeted today.

Source article

READ MORE HERE

Conservative Blogger: Net Neutrality v. Internet Payola

NPR’s Brian Lehrer today found that there is an issue in 2008, on which many from both the left and the right agree.

It happens about 23 minutes into an interview with Glenn Reynolds of right-leaning blog Instapundit.com and Adam Green of the progressive MoveOn.org Civic Action.

Lehrer had focused the topic on the Internet and presidential campaigns, but the conversation soon turned to Net Neutrality and its impact on what Green called “people-powered” Internet and “people-powered” politics.

MoveOn’s Green said that YouTube and online video are “revolutionizing the way that everyday people can put together political messages and spread them rapidly.”

Net Neutrality is central to this revolution, Green added, calling it an issue that “more enlightened people on both the left and right support.”

READ MORE HERE

Copps Introduces Plan for Internet Freedom

As hard as it may be for some to believe, last Saturday night an FCC commissioner was transformed into an Internet superstar.

Twitter traffic of Commissioner Michael Copps’ speech in Minneapolis on Saturday rocketed to the top of the popular network — garnering more mentions than “Obama,” “Clinton,” “Big Brown” and all other newsworthy terms posted that day by the millions of users of the viral Internet service.

And for good reason. On Saturday night Copps told an enthusiastic crowd of thousands at the National Conference for Media Reform that “reform is coming to Washington, DC, and my goal is to make media reform one of the first out of the gate.”

READ MORE HERE

Rogers admits to violating net neutrality

(DigitalHome.ca) - In a meeting held yesterday, that was restricted to only select members of the media, Rogers Communications admitted that it violated the principle of net neutrality by arbitrarily interfering with customer’s internet communications.

READ MORE HERE [ Source: DigitalHome.ca ]

Virgin Media to spy on and threaten downloaders

"Virgin Media -- the UK's largest cable-modem provider -- has decided that it will spy on its users to protect the record industry. It is sending out letters to thousands of customers warning them that infringement has been detected on their network connections"

READ MORE HERE

Net Neutrality Squad Offers Network Measurement Tool to Detects Reset Packets

"If you think your ISP is sniffing packets, or worse yet, sending reset packets to stop torrents, there's now a beta Network Measurement Tool to detect them, courtesy of Lauren Weinstein of the Net Neutrality Squad. It's released under the LGPL, and runs under Win2K, XP, and Vista..."

Read the rest at Slashdot

ACTION ALERT: Demand net neutrality now

(Council of Canadians) - As recently reported by various news outlets, Bell Canada plans to have its ‘third-party ISP traffic shaping’ policy implemented across its entire network by April 7. This policy is more accurately referred to as ‘throttling’, or the practice of shaping Internet traffic by selectively limiting bandwidth.

READ MORE HERE [ Source: Council of Canadians ]

Your Internet: Open or Closed?

During a Friday briefing in the chambers of the House Commerce Committee Tim Wu, Ben Scott, Marvin Ammori, Jef Pearlman and Markham Erickson laid out the central struggle in our campaign to save a free-flowing Internet.

Neutrality v. Monopoly

At stake is whether the Internet will be open, neutral and accessible to all or a closed network — controlled by a handful of gatekeepers with monopoly tendencies.

The speakers laid out this conflict in clear, concise and often chilling terms. Their comments are drawn into relief against a backdrop of abuses by network giants Comcast, AT&T and Verizon.

READ MORE HERE

Comcast’s Closed Internet

The FCC investigation of Comcast’s violations of Net Neutrality is in full swing. Thousands of activists have weighed in, and on Wednesday Free Press and its allies in the SavetheInternet.com Coalition filed extensive research and a lengthy legal analysis of what Comcast is doing (if you have been following the issue closely, you should enjoy all 100 pages).

Comcast is now playing defense.

Employing 10 lawyers and countless minions, Comcast claimed in its filing with the FCC that the crippling of innovative online video competitors such as BitTorrent, Vuze and Miro is no big deal. They claim to be only targeting the miniscule .01 percent of users who actually use the bandwidth they pay for every month. But this is completely false — even their army of high priced lawyers couldn’t mask their true aims.

What Comcast Is Really Doing

Let’s review what we know about Comcast’s actions:

1. It is crippling the content-delivery systems that have emerged as real threat to its $17 billion video business — and it’s own plans to dominate online video.

2. The company is limiting access for everyone — not just the mythical “bandwidth hogs.” Comcast isn’t just blocking the .01 percent from using these programs. They’re are also cutting off the other 99.99% — regardless of the size of the files being transferred. (The AP couldn’t even download a copy of the Bible.)

3. Comcast promised the public and the FCC over and over again that it has no reason to limit people’s connection and would never do so. Let’s review the history:

• Comcast, December 2000: We will value an open Internet.
• Comcast, May 2003: We don’t prevent our customers from doing anything.
• Comcast, August 2007: We do not mess with your connection.
• Comcast, October 2007: We (only slightly) mess with your connection, but it is “reasonable network management.”
• Comcast, February 2008: We mess with your connection and you can’t do anything about it.

 

That’s right. Now the Comcast lawyer army claims that the company can do whatever it wants with its network — and the FCC can’t do anything about it.

READ MORE HERE

Internet Bill a Blow to the Gatekeepers

Reps. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Chip Pickering (R-Miss.) today launched the latest salvo in the struggle to keep the Internet free from gatekeepers with the introduction of the “Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008” (HR 5353).

The bipartisan bill protects Net Neutrality under the Communications Act and calls for a nationwide conversation to set policy about the future of the Internet.

The legislation gives hope to the millions of Americans who have called for action to ensure that the public — not phone and cable companies — control the fate of the Internet.

Taking it Public

The new bill calls on the FCC to convene at least eight “broadband summits” to collect public input on a variety of policies “that will promote openness, competition, innovation, and affordable, ubiquitous broadband service for all individuals in the United States.”

READ MORE HERE

Comcast’s New Terms of Service: A Recipe for Discrimination

Comcast’s new “terms of service,” which were quietly issued last week, remove any doubt about who the cable and broadband giant is looking out for — and it’s not the customer.

On Jan. 25, the company released its “revised and effective” terms for Internet users with lots of restrictions and new limitations — but little fanfare. No press release. No announcement to customers.

Just a Web-accessible document that, fortunately for me, was forwarded by networking guru Robb Topolski. Upon reading the document Comcast’s relative silence becomes clear. Why publicize a limited and throttled service when you are pitching “unlimited” Internet access to your customers?

READ MORE HERE

A Bid for Cleaner, More Open Airwaves

Yesterday, the air that surrounds us became cleaner in a way.

The bidding on licenses to a chunk of the wireless spectrum hit its $4.6 billion minimum — triggering a set of open access conditions that will allow wireless Internet users to connect any device or application using these airwaves.

This marks as significant shift from the “walled garden” model that has dominated wireless networks in America.

READ MORE HERE