I knew they were committing fraud. They are nothing but crooks. I'm hoping for a class action suit so they can pay back all the subscribers. Even if the subscriber get nothing, it would be a wake-up call for the pompous theives. If the can include the cell phone system access charges in one that would be fabulous. They are nothing but crooks, if anyone else did this they would serve jail time.

I am DEEPLY concerned about this - being blatantly lied to by 2 co's selling us services (and god knows they aren't cheap) that they are NOT delivering to the consumer. How many os can quantify what their sleazy practises have cost us in slow up and download times, when many of us are struggling to make ends meet and have time for our families, and outrageous charges for up and download volume on top of our hefty month bill?

The speed of the service being offered is according to the service plan you are paying for. These comments are all in direct relation specifically to P2P traffic.

Bell and Rogers are clearly stating in these comments that the throttling of P2P is the same regardless of the plan you are on. They are not saying that the speed provided by the plan are the same regardless of the plan.

There must be a clear differentiation here.

While I agree that there should be a greater sense of neutrality among the service providers, Mr Kim is making it seem as if the end users are not getting the speed they are paying for across the entire breadth of their service plan. That is misleading and inflammatory.

^^^ That's such a minor point, I'm not convinced Chris doesn't have a vested interest in one or both of these ISPs.

Why should anyone care that arguably-illegal P2P traffic is being slowed, unless you're engaging in it?

I don't use P2P, and I get my advertised speeds...

Johnny, not all p2p traffic is illegal -- it is widely agreed that at least 5% of the content being exchanged using p2p applications is non copyright infringing, largely either updates of open source software or non-copyrighted or Creative Commons media files. In any case, illegality is not the reason that ISPs throttle p2p uploading (and in one case, Bell, p2p downloading too). Rather, the way the application works (it generates multiple TCP flows, in effect allowing the application to take a high proportion of any shared bandwidth) is.

actually, I've disagreed with Mr. Kim myself (never bothered to cmment) on plenty of topics that he's written about. however, this one, is pretty clear. This is a total shaft on all internet and it's about time they shake up the throttling.

Bell is evil. It's one thing to do what they do to their own customers, but wholesale (TekSavvy, etc) customers as well - it's crazy. It's downright misleading and Canada is at a third-world level in terms of technology when it comes to things like broadband and mobile phones (look at Bell, Telus and Rogers and then to carriers worldwide - you'll see a VAST difference) and they can get away with because Canadians won't say anything about it.

Bittorrent has many legal uses and the internet is going to get busier in terms of usage, not lighter. More and more people are watching HD video on Hulu and Youtube (Hulu isn't available in Canada though) and running bandwidth-intensive programs.

This isn't 1989, Bell. Get with it.

For those saying we are 3rd world in the line of broadband, there's a reason for that. The entire EU can be fit in one (non-maritime) province. When installing fiber, you don't pay for how many people will be using that fiber line, you pay for how many feet of it your installing. Some smaller cable companies (i.e. Mountain Cable) have excellent broadband speeds, but they serve a finite area.

The other thing to take into consideration, is its not just P2P traffic that is being shaped. In some cases, its any bandwidth intensive use.

ILERIN,

That's a red herring. Nobody is talking about installing fiber all over Canada.

The population of southern Ontario is greater than the population of all of Sweden. Who's broadband offerings make ours look ridiculous.

And Sweden is larger than Southern Ontario in land size. Almost 3 times the size.

HOW TO CIRCUMVENT TRAFFIC SHAPING WITH BITTORRENT:

Anyone wonder how Bell/Rogers/Shaw can shape bittorrent traffic? They use routers and filters that look at the headers. Several newer bittorrent clients (I use Vuze) have the ability to encrypt those headers. It means that you'll only be able to connect to others that have the same feature in their bittorrent client, but in many cases it will still get you much higher download speeds.

Previously, Shaw was limiting me to about 500kB/s downloads on bittorrent. After enabling "Encrypted Protocol Headers" in the settings, I can now get more than 2MB/s.

Spread the word. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent_protocol_encryption

They cannot successfully differentiate P2P traffic so the throttling affects encrypted traffic and other non-HTTP traffic as well. I get my advertised download speeds, but uploading to share home HD video files among family members is pointless because it takes so long -- might as well send a DVD through the mail.

The problem with any of these companies throttling only certain kinds of traffic is that they are deciding what content is or is not valid on the Internet. An Internet company should never be given control over what kinds of information get priority, especially large corporations clearly have a conflict of interest in relation to their media offerings. If they sell a package that advertises 100GB combined bandwidth per month, at 10mbit speeds, then what difference should it make if its Youtube video, Bittorrent, or 100GBs of LOLCats? A customer paying for 100GB of traffic should be able to decide for themselves how to expend that quota, and if the company cannot accommodate that level of traffic, they should change their terms of service.

Personally, I use many applications that depend on the Bittorrent protocol including Miro, Juice, Linux and BSD related downloads, creative-commons downloads and many other types of freely available content. On what authority is Rogers limited my ability to access and share these kinds of content? They have appointed themselves as the governors and regulators of the Internet without ever consulting the public, or even their own customer base.

Rogers has been throttling traffic for quite some time now, but never disclosed the practice in their service agreements. Even inquiries made with service representatives would result in denials. These companies have become so powerful that they can abuse the public interest and suffer no consequences. Something needs to be done to curb this monopoly on Internet (not to mention cellular) services in Canada. The need for strong Net Neutrality laws has never been clearer.

Until a large number of Canadian consumers get pissed off and decide to voice their opinion to their mp's or whatever (with their wallets), then Bell/Rogers/Telus/Videotron/Cogeco will just keep on their merry way and do what they want.

Canadians are too apathetic and are content to be throttled/shaped/capped

"Canadians are too apathetic and are content to be throttled/shaped/capped"

QFT

I'm pretty sure Canadian consumers are among the most easily manipulated in the developed world.

seems to me there was a protest in Ottawa about this very issue last year. A whopping two hundred protesters if I remember correctly. I suppose the beginnings of our current financial trouble may have been a factor in that (it was in my case), but even if all of Ontario were to turn out, it would change nothing. These fiscal cancers have already gone out of control. And what is our great and illustrious *cough* government going to do about it? Now now you boys place nice y'hear? Pfft! Pfft I say! Pfft to you all! Go ahead and try to throttle my dial-up! What's the point of driving on a multi-lane information highway if all but one lane is closed off during every rush hour? I'll stick to the back roads for now, tyvm.

You guys realise that they are only limiting speeds for p2p protocols, which is in most cases use to spread copyrighted work? When people say it has legitimate uses, you need to realize that the only thing legitimate about is companies trying to use ISP's to spread their content so they don't have to pay money for content delivery and place it on the back of ISPs. I for one am ok with this limiting speed practice as it doesn't affect anything i do and am always getting maximum speeds.

"Why should anyone care that arguably-illegal P2P traffic is being slowed, unless you're engaging in it?"

This is a common question, but comes from being mis-educated by the powerful copyright lobby. The studios (in totally separate business from this issue) have been making "P2P" the big bogeyman of piracy for years. But it is really just a tool for moving content from one computer to another - nothing illegal about the tool itself. People also email copyrighted mp3s to each other...as is web browsing (http). So, Johnny, do you not have a problem with the ISPs also throttling these?

An example of P2P traffic: I live in California, and my folks are in Toronto. I take photos and send them to my parents over Skype. That's P2P. We also do video calls and phone calls that are P2P. My company sends image files for marketing collateral to our design contractor using P2P.

Peer to Peer just means two computers in different places connecting directly to exchange data. There is nothing illegal about that. This "connecting to distant computers" is exactly why we pay for our Internet service, and we should get the quality and speeds that were sold to us.

ANON426: Most of the legitimate uses are hardly companies offloading their content delivery to ISPs, but instead people like myself to share our content among groups or create online collectives with the Internet bandwidth WE HAVE PAID FOR in order to so. You characterize P2P as freeloading, but any person using P2P has paid for the underlying bandwidth. If someone exceeds their transfer limits, then charge them more to compensate, which they are already doing. But that is not what is at issue here, is it? It's the limiting of certain types of Internet use by the telecoms for perfectly legitimate paying customers. Are you misinformed, or just a shill?

I think the CRTC should be disbanded and let the provinces take over the regulation of all telecommunication. The CRTC has allowed the telecommunication industry to defraud Canadians in so many ways. What other industry is allowed to snooker in customers with a low rate but for a very limited time and then drastically increase the fees. Are oil companies allowed to advertise a liter of gas at a certain price and then only give you a 1/4 or 1/2 liter at that price because you come to their pumps at a certain time of day (I am not a lawyer but I am sure the gas station operator would be charged with fraud). If I purchase a 7Mbs plan then I should get 7Mbs not 256k or 512k. We need a better watchdog that looks after the consumer rights and to stop the abuses of the communication and/or advertising industries. If the communication companies were under provincial control, the consumer protection agencies could provide us better protection. Maybe another solution would be to place bandwith under the weights and measures act.

Here is an analogy:

What do you think the reaction would be if the power company all of a sudden said, "We said we could give you 100kW per hour of electricity, and that's what you paid for, but our network is having "congestion". So instead of adjusting our power plans to say that we can only offer you 90kWhs, we have unilaterally decided that you any power that you use to turn on the lights in your house will only be available from 2:30am to 9:00am. ...but don't worry you're still "theoretically" able to get 100kW per hour, but just not to use for lights. You'll have to find another way to illuminate your house.

Do you now see why this kind of throttling is just plain lying?

Point: 1) If you can't support a 5mbs connection 24/7 for 365 days a year, then DONT ADVERTISE ONE. ADVERTISE LESS instead of lying and then throttling. 2) If you are having trouble providing 5Mbs to all of your subscribers, THEN STOP SUBSCRIBING PEOPLE. simple.

Do not advertise what you can't provide. Anything else is just plain and simple dishonest lying.

TELUS doesn't do any traffic shaping or enforce silly bandwidth caps on downloads, please don't lump them in with some douch bag ISP's in eastern Canada.

Telus may not employ traffic shaping methods, now but in both their presentation and CRTC submissions they clearly state that they reserve the right to do so, so YES they are just as evil, you forgot Aliant doesn't currently throttle either but again they reserve the right to do so.

Traffic shaping is a good thing. I'm happy if my mail comes a wee bit slower if it means my VoIP call won't sound crappy.

I'm happy if my ftp or bit torrent runs a little bit slower if it means that the YouTube video I'm watching doesn't run herky jerky.

I run a large corporate network, we do traffic shaping. Business applications get preferential treatment to other less important applications.

I started an ISP in 1992, and I've traffic shaped.

It's not that traffic shaping is by definition "Bad" The problem is that it's done for the benefit of the Telco or Carrier, and not for your benefit.

It's bad because you have to haul these jerks in front of the CRTC and put a gun to their heads before you can get any details at all on the how and why's.

There is no transparency, what they sell you and what you get are two different things, and it's not being done for your benefit so much as theirs.

That's what makes it maddening.

Ironically the company that makes all this possible is Sandvine Technology in Waterloo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandvine

Oh, and V's analogy about Power as shown above is faulty. In times of high demand power company lower your voltage, or impose rolling black out's to manage load. So the analogy fails.

As well, most of the people who claim P2P is used for "stealing" are quoting American laws on copyright, and not Canadian laws.

Stop watching the trailers at the movies, they are American laws for American audiences, just like the FBI warning at the start of every DVD you rent.

MALUS MALUM

Excellent post.

Many here seem to be missing the point. We have a back-room Hegemonic Monopoly Cartel in terms of ISP colusion between the big Com-COs.

I don't care if you are using P2P for legal or illegal purposes. If you pay for an apple and get a seed, you've been ripped off.

An ISP provides BANDWIDTH. Not judgement of the merit of particular protocols.

An ISP is paid OUR money to provide THROUGHPUT. Not to consistently pry into that throughput with deep packet inspection to invade my privacy, violate my rights along with their own terms of service and DELIBERATELY "steal" a portion of what WE PAID FOR in order to resell it to another subscriber, further overwhelming a network already well past capacity.

They are reselling what has already been sold and paid for, continualy signing on new customers and stealing bandwidth from existing customers, exacerbating the situation and only increasing capacity when legal issues and subscriber-loss begins to overtake the profit garnered from unsuspecting newbies.

It's akin to selling one car to five different people, then telling them that the fine-print gives them the right when the whole while each customer thought (and was deliberately led to believe) the car was theirs 24/7. And I can do without the nonsense of any analogy flaws being pointed out. If you can't admit that giving one dollars worth of something you sold for fifty is fraudulent then you are obviously misinformed or an industry shill.

It's simple logic. Provide what you sold or declare bankruptcy or face the legal punishment for the fraud you so obviously are commiting. Any just business model would have built into it the ability to expand capacity by default. A portion of each new subscibers fees should go directly to capacity expansion rather than straight into the bank.

We need a law ratified wherein the maximum monthly throughput accorded all subscibers of all packages of any particular ISP must cumulatively be matched by their network capacity. So if an ISP has 100 subscribers with a max throughput of 100 gigs per month, then their network must be able to handle every last byte of ALL OF IT, simultaneously ALL MONTH LONG. Anything less is fraudulent reselling of bandwidth that has already been paid for by other subscribers.

So there's your angle, lawyers. Reselling of what has already been payed for; and resultantly belongs to, other subscribers.

Get the class action suits rolling folks. I'm with you all the way. These theives have been getting away with it for far too long and they've grown cocky now to the point of flagrant, open abuse of our laws.

wow, there's some really good posts there, and you guys know who you are, excellent jobs all!

(honorable justice deserves honorable mention!) :)

ya know, i started out on dial-up way long ago. (the old folks will remember CRS) ;-) the old dial-up ISP's would have maybe a few dozen lines. that didn't stop them from selling accounts to hundreds of people! (thousands in the case of CRS!) Was there a phone line for every user? Nope. you got a busy signal, and you set up yer comm proggie to "war-dial" until you got through. yes, they were "over-selling" their service, EXACTLY the same as the major ISP'd do now, it's not really that much different. they sell and sell and there is NO WAY they have the hardware to back it up. both the old dial-up ISP's and the current major ISP's "gamble(d)" on the fact that, "hey, everybody can't want to dial in all at once, so if we implement a 5-to one user-to-modem ratio, we should be good to go!" and "hey, then maybe we can grab some more subscribers, and boost it up to a 10 user-to-modem ratio" ...and the greed just kept on coming! :(

well folks, the big baddies of today are working on the same dang concept of over-selling, just in a slightly variant manner. (Most) ISP's have been shafting us for years and years, i guess maybe it's just that more folks are starting to catch on nowadays! ;-)

either way, it's nice to see that they're getting some heat about it, but just don't get your hopes up, or count on anything good coming of it. even if they ARE forced to do something about it, (which i doubt), they will just find a way to pass the co$t on to their hapless victims, you and i! :(

CRTC needs to grow some balls.. We need to stop this now or it will become to late.. Arguments like switch to a different ISP are moot in Canada.. If you go DSL bell owns the lines.. Cable = Rogers.. All throttle and cap to hell.. I hope throttling and capping is ordered to stop.. At this point it's so sad I could care less if the GOVT was the internet telcos in Canada..

Does it really matter what data is being transferred or why? The point is, I'm paying for a service that I am NOT getting... at least not all the time. I could be downloading files from microsoft 100% of the time, big files like Windows 7 RC for example and they would not care. I didn't know it was up to our ISP to decide wether we should be getting copyrighted material or not. Last I checked the law prosecutes those people. I don't really care about the throttling personally because I don't download from P2P often, but when I do my downloads are capped to 30kbyte/s. Why should I have to put up with capped speeds when I'm paying them for full internet access. They can NOT tell me it must be the lines in my house/area because for one I'm in a new building and I get full speed most of the time from files off the internet. It doesn't make sense how I can download a huge file off the internet at full speed for hours depending on the size and not be able to download the exact same file from a P2P network at less than 1/10 the speed. Although I would agree with "switching is moot", however, it would give the bigger companies less money to work with. I'm gonna end this here with my 20cents before I start charging for a book :)

What the fuck is THAT guy talking about?

Radio, live transmission. Radio, live transmission.

Listen to the silence, let it ring on. Eyes, dark grey lenses frightened of the sun. We would have a fine time living in the night, Left to blind destruction, Waiting for our sight.

And we would go on as though nothing was wrong. And hide from these days we remained all alone. Staying in the same place, just staying out the time. Touching from a distance, Further all the time.

Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, to the radio. Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, to the radio. Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, to the radio. Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, to the radio.

Well I could call out when the going gets tough. The things that weve learnt are no longer enough. No language, just sound, thats all we need know, to synchronise Love to the beat of the show.

And we could dance.

Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, to the radio. Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, to the radio. Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, to the radio. Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, to the radio

YOUR IN http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OA9pgYxBtqc&feature=fvhr

Perhaps someone could clarify something for me. Rogers throttles all my uploads and downloads, not just P2P. It doesn't matter what the files are or where they come from--legitimate software upgrades directly from web sites etc.; they all come down at 60 kb/s and go up at 30. The only time I get the 500 kB/s I am paying for is on bandwidth test downloads!

So it's not only P2P traffic. Am I alone?

Sadly, the wholesale consumers (e.g., Acanac, Tek-Savvy, etc.) are affected by these practises as well, so it makes the search for a reliable ISP very difficult. That being said, I signed up with Caneris over a year ago -- for dry-loop DSL -- when I vowed never to use Bell or Rogers (directly) for anything ever again. Not only are their rates and services fantastic, but their customer service is stellar. For example, they provide their customers with a software patch that allows us to tunnel around throttling/traffic shaping, and it works amazingly well.

There are choices out there. You just have to be a bit more active in searching them out. If you are a Bell or Rogers customer, you're obviously not that active.

This is no different from the already accepted practices of overselling. Which we have been victim to for years.

We sell more bus/plane tickets than there are seats.

We sell more parking passes than there are spaces available.

We promise more vaccinations than we deliver.

Yet in each case, there exists a mechanism to expand.

Another flights/bus is made available to handle the overflow. More parking spaces are added every few years to accomodate. More vaccinations are assembled.

How is it, that the ISPs like Bell, aren't responsible for expanding as required? Or rather that the emphasis is placed on their woe-is-me story. I sense that because in each of the above cases, there is a sense of moral outrage attached that just isn't matched in the packet-world, because users don't know precisely what's happening.

That is the part we need to fix. Included with traffic shaping poclies made public, ISPs should also have an "expansion plan" in place to accomodate and minimize the need for shaping in the first place. Shaping is a WORKAROUND, until expansions can be made, not a reason to avoid expansion entirely!

Because as the backbones increase, I for one will not stand to have my fiber-to-the-home connection restricted by rules made out of fear 10-15 years ago by lazy, and out of touch CIO/CEOs.

Maybe we can have internet services re-classified as a utility. Then the taxpayers will own it, as well as use it.

Regardless, the CRTC is at fault for not pressing these companies harder to outdo their competitors. Instead, creating rules that allow stonewalling of technical development.

And P2P is an acronym. Peer-to(for those texting types)-Peer is a PROTOCOL. An agreed upon series of exchanges that allows data to be transferred from one point to another. That's it. Just as a screwdriver is a tool to be used, so is P2P. Hell, I can't believe we aren't delivered news"papers" via uTorrent at this point in time. It's THE FASTEST way to reach every connected individual alive. And yet here we are, on a witch-hunt for the evil pirates.

Stop relinquishing common sense rights out of drummed up fear.