Bell Canada Shapes Up Wholesale ISPs
26. Mar, 2008 
4 Comments
Globe and Mail’s Matt Hartley wrote an article this morning about Bell Canada packet shaping its wholesale ISP’s end customer’s data.
Rocky Gaudrault, the chief executive officer of Teksavvy Solutions Inc., a Chatham based ISP with 21,000 DSL subscribers across Ontario appears to be leading the charge against Bell’s decision to throttle his customer’s Internet connections.
Packet shaping is a term used to describe the limiting of certain types of network traffic, such as bit torrent. By limiting certain types of traffic, Bell can free up network resources to ensure the network operates efficiently.
“Estimates vary, but analysts believe peer-to-peer and torrent traffic accounts for anywhere from 70 to 90 per cent of online bandwidth use, but emanates from as few as 5 to 10 per cent of all users.” [source]
There’s going to be a lot of news about this, and this post doesn’t attempt to cover off every point to be made on the subject. With 15 years in the telecom/ISP business, the packet shaping had to be implemented to ensure the fair and equitable distribution of bandwidth for all network users. At $30-50 for DSL service, the usage patterns of bit torrent users make this a money loser for the ILECs based on the equipment upgrades required to support the network traffic across their core.
With that being said, Bell Canada did make two serious mistakes that will probably mean they’ll need to disable the shaping of IP traffic until they can address the following concerns:
Bell Canada does not have a plan to offer unrestricted service for customers who want it.
Based on my sources, Bell implemented the throttling in such a way that precludes it from throttling on a per user basis. This is unfortunate since there are no provisions to enable a customer to have unrestricted access for perhaps a higher fee.
This project has been in the works for months, but Bell Canada failed to advise its wholesale ISP customers.
Bell Canada did not advise their wholesale ISP customers of the project, or its pending implementation. This has had serious side effects to many ISP customers that have come to expect unlimited high speed downloads. Bell is currently hiding behind its spokesman Jason Laszlo who states “This isn’t a new policy. Our agreements with wholesale ISP customers clearly include provisions regarding our rights to manage our networks appropriately to the benefit of all customers.”
Mr. Laszlo: Just because you have the legal wording to back it up, it doesn’t excuse you from having the appropriate conversations with your customers to ensure they know what you’re up to.
I guess what they say is true: “It’s easier to beg forgiveness than to ask permission.”
Knowing Bell’s reluctance to provide good customer service, I bet they don’t even beg forgiveness.
UPDATE: dslreports.com says there’s talk of Indie ISP’s filing a lawsuit against Bell Canada.
UPDATE2: Check out the Facebook group: Stop Bell from Throttling Internet Resellers. It was created by Chris Hiscock and Michael Geist and has 195 members and counting.
Pass the true costs of today’s residential usage patterns to end users–for instance by bringing 95th percentile billing down to the residential level–and the laws of economics will traffic patterns to ISP capacity in short order. End of problem. No traffic discrimination required.
That’s always been my theory Coridon. It works with hydro, water and gas utilities and it puts the responsibility on the people actually creating the bottlenecks.
That system is not without its challenges too though: What is the fair price the ILECs should charge for over-utilization, how would that flow-through to the wholesalers and will people be able to afford the overage charges?
This is what’s happening in the cellphone world and cable Internet – Rogers and Bell send bills to “abuses” totaling thousands and sometimes tens of thousands of dollars.