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Canada’s internet regulator, the Canada Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, didn’t fully understand the technology involved and made errors in the November 2008 judgment, said an application filed with the commission Thursday by Canadian Association of Internet Providers (CAIP), along with the Consumers’ Association of Canada and a number of other groups,
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Therefore I have a contract with Bell and I can sue them for interfering with my phone line. But why do we need a government and pay taxes if we have to fend ourselves?
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ISPs seek to overturn decision on Bell traffic throttling Telecompaper – May 22, 2009 The Canadian Association of Internet Providers, Consumers’ Association of Canada and other groups have filed an application with the telecommunications regulator CRTC to reconsider a November 2008 decision concerning Bell Canada’s throttling of …
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TO BE FAIR THE LIBERALS ALSO GO ALONG WITH BAD BELL. I had spoken and asked directly Quebec’s finance minister Monique Forget to deal with bad Bell but she was hesitant to and I wondered why till I had next read that the new head of the Quebec’s pension fund is Michael Sabia, former head of Bell Canada Enterprises, who took over in March of this year.
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Conference Board says 3 reports plagiarized Toronto Star – The Conference Board of Canada, which bills itself as “the foremost, independent, not-for-profit applied research organization” in the country, has recalled three reports following allegations some of the material was plagiarized.
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Copyright Report Caught Copying Raise the Hammer
all 96 news articles »
The CRTC application alleges multiple errors of fact and law in the decision and points specifically to the CRTC’s lack of a full understanding of the issues raised in the proceeding. CAIP argues that the CRTC specifically launched the larger net neutrality proceeding this summer in order to gain that fuller understanding, but argues that:
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A broader proceeding in order to understand the complex issues raised in the CAIP application is a perfectly acceptable and responsible means of developing a thoughtful policy approach and decision on network management. What is entirely unfair and unacceptable, however, is the fact that the Commission rendered Decision 2008-108 without the benefit of a comprehensive understanding of the factual, legal and policy issues at play. In particular, if the Commission did not believe that it had an adequate evidentiary record or did not have a full understanding of the factual and legal issues raised by Bell’s throttling of wholesale GAS services to be able to determine in an unqualified and final manner the issues raised in the CAIP proceeding, then it was procedurally unfair for the Commission to have rendered a decision on CAIP’s application.
Moreover, CAIP highlights a concern raised by many in the net neutrality world – that the CRTC has already decided many of the bigger issues even before the July hearings begin. CAIP notes that:
in effect, the Commission has pre-judged certain factual and legal issues raised in the PN 2008-19 proceeding, thereby narrowing the scope of the Commission’s decision in the PN 2008-19 proceeding even before it is made. As long as Decision 2008-108 stands, the perception that the Commission has pre-judged the outcome of PN 2008-19 on the key issue of the legality of CAP-based throttling pursuant to subsection 27(2) and section 36 of the Act will persist.
The application continues with specific examples of error in fact and law. These include errors in fact on P2P activities and the use of deep packet inspection as well as numerous errors in law, particularly in the way the CRTC interpreted sections 27(2) and 36 of the Telecommunications Act. The CAIP application comes as a surprise given that most of the attention had moved to this summer’s net neutrality hearings and places the CRTC on the defensive just weeks before those hearings are scheduled to take place.
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CRTC filing lodged by a coalition of consumer groups and indie telecommunication groups who’ve been adversely hit by the Bell Canada’s DPI and throttling practices.And they’re standing up for your rights, your privacy, and their right to function in a business environment that hasn’t been competitively crippled and hijacked by vested corporate interests.
The coalition comprises
- The Consumers’ Association of Canada,
- Canada Without Poverty
- Council of PIAC
- Canadian Association of Internet Providers (CAIP),
- Acanac Inc.,
- Accelerated Connections Inc.,
- Cybersurf Corp.,
- eagle.ca,
- Execulink Telecom Inc.,
- Managed Network Systems Inc. (MSNi),
- Skyway West Business Internet Services,
- Start Communications,
- TekSavvy Solutions Inc.
- Vianet Internet Solutions,
- Yak Communications Inc.
Their filing, which highlights many oversights, errors, rights, privacy issues, and competitive disputes not taken into consideration during the CRTC’s ruling, hasn’t yet been posted on the CRTC website, but it can be found here and here, and followed here.
SPECIFIC GROUNDS FOR REVIEW AND VARIANCE
15. Section 62 of the Act states:
62. The Commission may, on application or on its own motion, review and rescind or vary any decision made by it or re-hear a matter before rendering a decision.
16. In Telecom Public Notice CRTC 98‐6, Guidelines for review and vary applications, 20 March 1998 (“PN 98‐6”), the Commission stated that in order for the Commission to exercise its discretion pursuant to section 62 of the Act, an applicant must demonstrate that there is substantial doubt as to the correctness of the original decision. The Commission then went on to state that substantial doubt as to the correctness of the original decision may arise, for example, due to
(i) An error in law or in fact;
(ii) A fundamental change in circumstances or facts since the decision;
(iii) A failure to consider a basic principle which had been raised in the original proceeding; or
(iv) A new principle which has arisen as a result of the decision.
17. The Applicants submit that there is substantial doubt as to the original correctness of Decision 2008‐108 as a result of the following specific errors of fact and law. The
Commission
(a) Erred in fact in deciding that P2P transmissions take up as much bandwidth as possible and are unique, among all other types of transmissions, in doing so;(b) Erred in fact in stating that in order to identify the application or protocol of telecommunications, Bell need only examine the “header information of the packet;”9
(c) In relation to Bell’s GAS tariff and sections 24 and 25 of the Act, erred in fact and in law
(i) in allowing Bell to apply a different standard relating to fair and proportionate use of its network by the end‐customers of ISPs than the standard that it has applied historically to both ILECs and to the cable companies;
(ii) in considering that Bell’s use of DPI to inspect and treat packets in P2P transmissions differently does not violate the GAS tariff, which defines GAS as a PPPoE or Layer 2 service; and
(iii) in concluding that at the time of the Decision, Bell had no other “practical option that is technologically and economically suitable” but to throttle GAS;
(d) In relation to CAIP’s subsection 27(2) grounds for relief,
(i) Erred in law by narrowing the scope of the proceeding without notice to the parties, such that CAIP’s section 27 arguments were only considered in relation to Bell’s treatment of its own retail Internet access customers;
(ii) Erred in law in failing to consider whether Bell was subjecting GAS to different treatment as compared to all other high‐bandwidth services that Bell offers to itself or to others using the same “shared” network referred to by Bell and the Commission;
(iii) Applied the wrong legal test in determining that subsection 27(2) comports an element of subjective intention or bad faith;
(iv) Erred in law and in fact in considering that the breaches of section 27(2) were justified given that
A. there is no evidence that P2P applications represent a threat to the integrity of wireline ILEC networks;
B. Bell’s throttling measure is at once under inclusive in that it only affects P2P applications and not other bandwidth intensive applications and overinclusive in that it affects both heavy and “non‐heavy” users equally; and
C. Bell’s throttling measure is not proportional and minimally intrusive since there were many other options for Bell to achieve its objective, whether it be the objective of relieving congestion or of controlling the usage of heavy users;
(e) In relation to section 36 of the Act, erred in law and in fact by concluding that:
(i) Bell’s traffic shaping measures “does not involve blocking any telecommunications”;
(ii) file‐sharing applications only involve transmissions of downloadable “files” which require “time for the file to be transmitted before an enduser can access it.”;
(iii) Bell is not controlling the content of the telecommunications that it carries for the public;
(iv) Bell is not influencing the meaning of the telecommunications that it carries for the public; and that
(v) Bell is not influencing the purpose of the telecommunications that it carries for the public;
(f) Did not comply with the requirements of the Policy Direction to state which policy objectives were advanced by its decision and did not give sufficient justification for its decision thereunder;
(g) Erred in law in failing to give due consideration to
(i) The freedom of expression of content providers, Canadian Internet users, and independent ISPs;
(ii) The Canadian telecommunications policy objective of protecting the privacy of telecommunications set out at paragraph 7(i) of the Act;10 and
(iii) The Canadian telecommunications policy objective of promoting maximum reliance on market forces and ensuring efficient and effective regulation as set out at paragraph 7(f) of the Act.
18. In addition to the foregoing errors, there is at least one changed circumstance relating to the options available to Bell to relieve congestion in its network that calls into doubt both the original and continuing correctness of Decision 2008‐108. In particular, as described in Section IV below, it would appear that Bell has standardised Ethernet Layer 2 switches throughout its network in order to relieve congestion in certain areas of its network. This development calls into question the continuing necessity of Bell’s network‐wide throttling of P2P applications as well as raising the issue (if only in the alternative) of whether Bell’s throttling of P2P applications should be time‐limited or subject to any other restrictions.
The filing goes into great detail on each of these points.
I haven’t had the time to really get into it yet, but I will — and I noticed all sorts of facts the CRTC didn’t address, as did users on DSLreports.
For example, mlerner (http://www.dslreports.com/profile/248514) spotted this gem »»»
44. However, the fact that Bell looks at Layer 7 information in order to determine the application software running on the CPE misses a more fundamental point that relates to GAS specifically. GAS is a PPPoE or Layer 2 (Data Layer) service according to Bell GT Item 5410. As such, anything above Layer 2 (Layers 3‐7) constitutes the PPPoE “payload” under GAS. While Bell must possess PPPoE header information in order to provide GAS, there is no need for Bell to examine even the source and destination IP address information of GAS traffic in order to deliver the tariffed service.
This raises a privacy issue when Bell is looking at point of origin and destination, as well as packet payload on customers that aren’t even theirs.
Makes me wonder if the Privacy Commissioner will be dragged into this, as I believe she should be.
The throttle and DPI fight is not over.
Definitely stay tuned… http://www.p2pnet.net/story/22033
The new age- The Internet and the word “free” are so entwined when it comes to getting news and information online from mainstream media outlets that consumers aren’t going to want to give it up, Anyone born in the 1980s the computer age now doesn’t expect to pay for news. Advertisers have to pay for it.
About sowing and reaping.. “Recession fallout hits BCE, Telus wireless results BCE ‘NOT IMMUNE’ TO ECONOMY “We’re not immune,” BCE Chief Executive George Cope said of the economy during a conference call with analysts. The company’s shares fell 62 Canadian cents to C$25.45.The company’s quarterly revenue edged lower to C$4.34 billion ($3.7 billion) from C$4.36 billion a year earlier. At Telus, revenue crawled higher to C$2.37 billion from C$2.35 billion.” Reuters – More miss information, lying corporate spin and what about news editors, news reporters using their own brain, research rather? doing the honest reporting? –all 96 articles »
Bell has no one but itself to blame for it’s own downfall, 40 percent of it’s own customers have complained about big bad Bell abusing them, lying to them, not keeping their contract agreement already. I have often told Bell in writing that would all happen now too on the net as well..
Bell like Loblow , Royal LePage merely reaps too what it sows.. it next fails to get repeat customers and much needed referrals as a direct result too..
DO SEE ALSO
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.. why Bell is always a LOSER. It is Always looking for some way to SOCK IT TO their customers over and over again and find another excuse to make the customers pay more.
“The present future development of iPhone includes multimedia messaging (MMS), and adding data tethering to the iPhone, which will turn the device into a wireless modem to connect laptops to 3G networks.
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“MMS and Tethering – two features that have been readily available on many smartphones for years – are finally
making their way to the iPhone. But if you’re in the United States, you won’t be able to use them for at least a few months. Because AT&T, the network with an exclusive lock on the iPhone in the US, couldn’t get it together in time to support them for the iPhone 3.0 software launch. At launch on June 17th, MMS is going to be supported by 29 carriers, and tethering will be supported by 22 of them. So when can we finally expect these stateside? MMS is apparently coming “later this summer”. And tethering? A much more nebulous (and ominous) “later”.
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This is ridiculous, plain and simple. AT&T has almost certainly known about Apple’s plans for many months if not years, and was probably involved in determining when these features would be launching in the first place.
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AT&T has made it clear many times that it simply doesn’t have the bandwidth to support the millions of new iPhone users that are using their “unlimited” data plans far more than they would on other phones.
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Apparently AT&T won’t support the long-awaited addition of MMS upon the iPhone 3GS’s launch. Boy Genius Report explains the situation thusly, [T]he reason it’s not good to go right away is because AT&T has to manually remove all the “Opt Out MMS codes” on each account. Basically, if we were to summarize this, and we’re going out a little bit of a limb, remove the Opt Out MMS code, and MMS will work with the final OS 3.0 build right away. We’ve also just heard that tethering will be 100% locked out at launch, but AT&T’s in the process of putting together a $70/mo unlimited data and tethering plan. SMS and MMS will not be included in that plan, we’re told.” http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/08/att-underscores-how-badly-it-sucks/
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Sadly AT&T for a start is not the only carrier that doesn’t have presently adequate existing bandwidth to support all of their customers, iPhone users using an “unlimited” data plan and that would now include Rogers and Bell? who are clearly already capping their existing customers and others to over come this serious shortcoming, and in spite of what they do all promise now they might have in the future I really rightfully do not believe them.
do see also
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