Small ISPs Reveal Bell Fibe TV Transits Over Shared Networks

Launched September 2010, Bell's Fibe TV service now has 800,000 subscribers in Ontario and Quebec. This Internet protocol television (IPTV) service delivers HD and on-demand content as well as interactive features via fibre, allowing the service to be faster and clearer than competing television services.

Launched September 2010, Bell's Fibe TV service now has 800,000 subscribers in Ontario and Quebec. This Internet protocol television (IPTV) service delivers HD and on-demand content as well as interactive features via fibre, allowing the service to be faster and clearer than competing television services.

In April, Bell Canada claimed that it did not use the 'shared network' to deliver this service, but some small ISPs are now disputing this claim, stating that it actually uses "substantial portions of the 'shared network'."

This is something that has been revealed in network management hearings before: both IPTV and IP traffic travel through the same pipes, and because of that, the two types of traffic compete with each other for the same bandwidth.

Given the ISPs habit of throttling traffic that competes with their own content and services, this is concerning. So long as these two services use the same infrastructure, they will compete for bandwidth and so long as ISPs have free reign to manage the traffic over these networks, their managed content will take priority over other, more neutral content.

IPTV puts an increasing amount of network traffic under the control of gatekeepers. If left unchecked and unregulated, this threatens to undermine the spirit of open access that the Internet was founded upon. We need to preserve space for open access and keep our networks neutral so that everyone has space to play.

Read more:
TV versus the Internet

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