Bell Canada takes heat from clients for limiting online speed

Bell Canada takes heat from clients for limiting online speed

by: Roberto Rocha

File-sharing customers fire up complaints as giant extends limit to resellers

"Hands off my Internet" is the message Bell Canada is hearing from Canadians this week and last.
Alarmed by the company's decision to limit Internet speeds when using file-sharing programs, customers are treating Bell to a public relations storm, and asking the government to intervene if necessary.
The issue is what is known as "traffic shaping" or "throttling," the slowing down of Internet speeds for certain types of data. Bell Sympatico said last November that it slows the service of people who share files on peer-to-peer networks like BitTorrent and LimeWire.
But the final straw for Internet activists came last week, when Bell said it will do the same for Internet providers that resell Bell's service under another brand.
"It's certain that it disturbs us a lot. We're talking millions of people that will be affected (in Canada)," said Jean-Philippe Béïque, president of ElectronicBox, a Bell Internet reseller in Montreal.
"We don't know what technology Bell is using to throttle. We're wondering if our other services, like Internet telephony, will be affected," he said.
Now Béïque and other third-party resellers have hundreds of Canadians rushing to their defence, gathering on Facebook groups decrying Bell and writing letters to the CRTC, to the Competition Bureau and to Industry minister Jim Prentice.

One of these is Steve Anderson, a masters student at Simon Fraser University and co-ordinator of Campaign for Democratic Media, an association of lobby groups.

"Our main goal is to raise awareness. When people know that Internet providers are trying to shape what applications they can use, they're naturally appalled and take action on their own accord," Anderson said.

His Stop the Throttler Facebook group, marked by a malicious-looking beaver chewing through a phone cable, had 535 members as of yesterday. Another group, Stop Bell From Throttling DSL Resellers, has more than 1,000 members sharing news items and tales of contempt for Bell.

The telco, which is about to become a private company, says it throttles peer-to-peer traffic to keep a few bandwidth hogs from slowing everyone else down.
"Most people are doing online banking, watching YouTube videos, the basic services. We want to offer them the best service possible," spokesperson Jacques Bouchard said.
"Let's look at the big picture. The pressures put on carriers are everywhere, all over North America," he added. "We're not shutting down the whole service, we're only limiting one application during peak hours."
Pat Hurley, an analyst at research firm TeleChoice, said five to 10 per cent of Internet users take up most of the bandwidth as they download high definition movies and play games online.
"It's breaking assumptions that Internet providers had on how they built their infrastructure based on the average user," he said.
While these providers have a valid argument, Hurley said, they enforce it in dishonest ways. Often, the terms of use for Internet services are vague and filled with fine-print exceptions.
"Throttling without telling customers is just bad PR," he said.
In the U.S., peer-to-peer throttling is a major issue that is receiving Congressional attention. A bill was introduced in February in the House of Representatives to order the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to investigate the practice.
In Canada, the topic of so-called Net neutrality has not reached household status. However, observers like Ottawa law professor Michael Geist, believe Bell's actions will intensify the debate.
Letters being written to the Competition Bureau, at least, will go unheeded. The Bureau does not consider Bell's move an abuse of dominance under the Competition Act, since Bell is throttling its own customers as well.
"Bell's practice is network-wide," said Marylyne Nahum, a spokesperson for the Competition Bureau. "It targets both wholesale and retail clients."
The CRTC, which is also a target of letter writers, said this week it had not received any complaints.
Regardless of the intention, third-party resellers like Béïque fear this tactic will backfire for Bell and its partners.
"There will be people who will migrate to other technologies, like cable," he said.
It's too soon to tell whether Bell clients have made the jump. Isabelle Dessureault of Groupe Vidéotron Ltd., Bell's main competitor, couldn't say whether there has been a sharp rise in new clients since last week.
Vidéotron does not throttle peer-to-peer traffic, but has been criticized for having stringent limits on how much data clients can download.

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