GNG News Guy
03-25-2008, 04:15 PM
http://i.dslr.net/urls/40/18340.gif (http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Bell-Canada-Confirms-Throttling-92973)
Techdirt (http://techdirt.com/articles/20080324/152928636.shtml), Slashdot (http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/08/03/25/035200.shtml) and Canadian law Professor Michael Geist (http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2782/125/) all discuss our report yesterday (http://thegng.org/shownews/Bell-Canada-Throttles-Wholesalers-Doesnt-Bother-To-Tell-Them-92915) 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:They're now openly acknowledging that they are rolling out a full throttling process. They plan to have things fully throttled by April 7th. All BT and P2P traffic will be affected. They claim they are allowed to do so according to their Terms and Services under the Fair Usage Policy in the tariffed contracts... We'll be looking into this shortly.
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 (http://thegng.org/forum/r20223187-Update-on-throttling-issue), including a letter writing campaign (http://thegng.org/forum/r20222104-Generic-Letter-to-Competition-Bureau-re-Bell-throttling-ISP) to the Canadian competition bureau.
Meanwhile, Bell Sympatico is fielding complaints from their own broadband customers about the throttling. One user offers the
Techdirt (http://techdirt.com/articles/20080324/152928636.shtml), Slashdot (http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/08/03/25/035200.shtml) and Canadian law Professor Michael Geist (http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2782/125/) all discuss our report yesterday (http://thegng.org/shownews/Bell-Canada-Throttles-Wholesalers-Doesnt-Bother-To-Tell-Them-92915) 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:They're now openly acknowledging that they are rolling out a full throttling process. They plan to have things fully throttled by April 7th. All BT and P2P traffic will be affected. They claim they are allowed to do so according to their Terms and Services under the Fair Usage Policy in the tariffed contracts... We'll be looking into this shortly.
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 (http://thegng.org/forum/r20223187-Update-on-throttling-issue), including a letter writing campaign (http://thegng.org/forum/r20222104-Generic-Letter-to-Competition-Bureau-re-Bell-throttling-ISP) to the Canadian competition bureau.
Meanwhile, Bell Sympatico is fielding complaints from their own broadband customers about the throttling. One user offers the