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Usage Based Billing approved, Canadian govt shoots it down, more developments to come

Jinaar said:
160x120 resolution is best resolution.

Guys, we're gonna be just fine. I remember when I got a copy of Encarta on CD (1997?) and I was super impressed with the inclusion of videos on their entries. Sure, it was probably encoded at 160x120, but if I went to the very back of my room and watched the video, it actually looked like what it was trying to represent.

We all just have to get used to sitting further back from our screens is all. Besides, isn't that best for our eyes?
 
Listening to where the shills start talking. I had to turn off the Bell rep because his lies were making me so angry. Listening to Shaw now and they have started to claim that Canada is a world leader in internet service which is clearly not true. I don't know how they think we don't notice these things. I hope they get ripped into.
 
Not listening today. It'll just make me angry, and we know what they argument is. Although, I should listen just to be fair.. but I don't want to break something.

Are the MPs actually using points that TekSavvy/Primus/Small ISPs brought up yesterday?

Teksavvy had a chart showing how shitty our internet is compared to the rest of the world in terms of speed and cost. How can Shaw be telling them the exact opposite without some sort of rebuttal?
 
EvilMario said:
Not listening today. It'll just make me angry, and we know what they argument is. Although, I should listen just to be fair.. but I don't want to break something.

Are the MPs actually using points that TekSavvy/Primus/Small ISPs brought up yesterday?

Teksavvy had a chart showing how shitty our internet is compared to the rest of the world in terms of speed and cost. How can Shaw be telling them the exact opposite without some sort of rebuttal?

Yeah there are some points where I'm getting pissed off. Bells introductory remarks were particularily offensive. I'll listen to what they say but that doesn't change the fact that they are giant douche bags. Wow, they just implied that people who are at home at 1PM are unemployed bums.

Edit: Haha, IPTV baaaackpedal
 
Amazing show coming up folks, tonight at 8pm watch The Agenda on TVO. Teksavvy's walking-ownage-giver George Burger is going to be on as well as Bell's Snake, Bibic.

Should be a great show. Bibic is gonna get torn and it's gonna be good.
 
Haha..just watched The Agenda. Burger kicked ass as usual. I love his last comment about Netflix for $8 compared to Bell's service which charges that much per movie. Bibic totally avoided a response to it. Priceless.
 
TAS said:
Haha..just watched The Agenda. Burger kicked ass as usual. I love his last comment about Netflix for $8 compared to Bell's service which charges that much per movie. Bibic totally avoided a response to it. Priceless.
He looks like a moron every time he's in front of a camera.
 
Anyone know if Bell is going to be forced to show any true numbers that their claims are facts and how they go to their conclusions in these hearings?

From what I gathered Bell pretty much said "we don't give a shit what the CRTC said, UBB is happening".
 
EGM92 said:
Anyone know if Bell is going to be forced to show any true numbers that their claims are facts and how they go to their conclusions in these hearings?

From what I gathered Bell pretty much said "we don't give a shit what the CRTC said, UBB is happening".

Nothing has been decided yet, but it's been talked about that there should be a third party verifying their numbers.

Firestorm said:

Video Podcast. I'm watching right now. Just saw Bell's opening statement. I already want to pull his eyes out.

http://www.tvo.org/cfmx/tvoorg/theagenda/index.cfm?page_id=741

edit: Beaten.

edit2: Show was okay. I think they should have touched on more points about the conflict of interest for these companies, and why we have such a shitty place in the world rankings when it comes to internet cost and speeds.

The conservative guy was hardcore against UBB, but he didn't really seem to understand what was wrong with it what they're proposing. Just kept harping on about 'I'll have to pay more now, it's my job', and 'A family would have to pay more'. Well, duh.
 
Zombie James said:

Which has been expanding painfully slow, due to some bs about needing to use up the block of IPs they currently have. IIRC it basically boils down to Rogers making things difficult and the CRTC doing nothing about it.
 
TheRagnCajun said:
Which has been expanding painfully slow, due to some bs about needing to use up the block of IPs they currently have. IIRC it basically boils down to Rogers making things difficult and the CRTC doing nothing about it.

I thought they got all the IPs they needed from ARIN and are now just waiting on a bunch of links to finish being ordered and to go online?
 
Zzoram said:
How are they sticking it to Bell?

In the face of Bell's 'teh internets are going to assplode because of high volume users' argument, they've increased their 200gb service to 300gb. Seems like a pretty sure fired troll to me, and I approve.
 
I'm likely going to switch from rogers to teksavvy. I'd rather have a cheap, huge BW cap at a lower speed. I wonder why they don't offer cable over 1.5MBps
 
EGM92 said:
That's an obvious troll, it would be even better if they offered Fibe speeds on their service.

They can't yet. In the Teksavvy chat they said that it'll be like June before the speed matching happens. There's some red tape to get through before they can start offering the higher speeds to customers or something.
 
krae_man said:
They can't yet. In the Teksavvy chat they said that it'll be like June before the speed matching happens. There's some red tape to get through before they can start offering the higher speeds to customers or something.


Awesome as soon as that happens I'm switching over to TSI and never looking back. Right now I have a grandfather Bell 6Mb/s line that I'm paying 67$ taxes in a month. I have my own modem now, and Bell refuses to let me use my own. So screw them, and I hope they burn and Clement force feeds some of their own medicine.
 
Finally got around to listening to The Agenda and that second hearing.

Man, so many of these people are terrible public speakers. That one lady had a 10 minute speach written for her 5 minute opening statement. For crying out loud, practice and time the damn thing. The openmedia guy made a meme refrence, A MEME REFERENCE! Jesus. We're going to lose if we don't get competent public speakers backing our cause. Bells guy may be a lying scumbag, but he's clear, concise, and on point with his bullshit.
 
All quiet now, it appears. We won't see much until the CRTC comes through with their 'rethought' ruling.

edit: Interesting article.

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5631/125/

As is often the case with House of Commons committee hearings, yesterday's Industry Committee hearing on usage based billing saved the best for last. Addressing a specific question from the chair about the separation of IPTV and Internet services on Bell's network, Bell's Mirko Bibic responded:

There is a copper loop that goes from our Central Office to the home and all data travels on that pipe so it's Internet traffic, it's television traffic, it's actually voice traffic, long distance traffic, but that's not where there are general congestion issues. The real issue is when you get to the Central Office and you go behind that to the general Internet, FIBE TV is completely different.

Bell's comments are noteworthy since they confirm that there is no congestion in the "last mile" - the connection between the user and the so-called Central Office. At the moment, Bell aggregates the data from both its own retail customers and independent ISPs at this stage (which it says causes the congestion necessitating traffic shaping and UBB), though the independent ISP subscriber traffic later goes to the independent ISP before heading to the Internet. The "congestion problem" is therefore not at the last mile nor at the Internet - it is in the intermediate stage between the two.


This raises the question of why not offer the independent ISPs access to the network at the Central Office or at other earlier points in the network so that their users' traffic never causes congestion for Bell? If the congestion problem occurs during the brief period when wholesale and retail traffic is aggregated (Bell said the same during the Internet traffic management hearings in 2009), why not avoid it by mandating that Bell allow independent ISPs to access their subscribers' traffic earlier?

The answer appears to be that Bell vehemently opposed just such a solution, telling the CRTC in June 2010 that the approach would mean that it would not invest in its own network. When asked about one such proposal - known as ADSL-CO - Bibic told CRTC Chair Konrad von Finckenstein that (para 7806):

with ADSL-CO, once the independent ISP gets subsidized access to the full speed and capacity over that fibre, and the ability to fully differentiate their service from ours -- and there goes usage-based billing -- there is nothing more for the ISP to build. If they get a customer, they pay us. If they don't get a customer, they don't pay us. Their cost structure is success-based, as I mentioned yesterday, with no upfront risk capital required.

In other words, Bell recognized that ADSL-CO would mean that independent ISPs would be able to better differentiate their services (including the prospect of no traffic shaping) and eliminate Bell's ability to implement wholesale usage based billing. The entire exchange is worth reading because it plainly recognizes the consequences of allowing independent ISPs to fully compete with speed matching and ADSL-CO. Bell describes it as "damaging" since it "undermines the ability to win the broadband home."

Of course, the whole point is to foster competition so that Bell competes for the broadband home, rather than winning it by default since their are few other viable alternatives. Yet despite Bell making it very clear that ADSL-CO would make the market more competitive with more differentiated offerings and despite the fact that companies like Primus and TekSavvy indicated that they would invest to use such a service, the CRTC denied the application to declare it an essential service.
 
interesting article. I thought there was a meeting tomorrow with Clement on CPAC? I really want to hear what his position is on all this besides his few comments on twitter. Bells anti competition BS really needs to be put in its place.
 
So I've been wondering, let's say UBB really doesn't come to pass. What's stopping Bell from jacking up the wholesale prices for TekSavvy and other independent ISPs?
 
squall23 said:
So I've been wondering, let's say UBB really doesn't come to pass. What's stopping Bell from jacking up the wholesale prices for TekSavvy and other independent ISPs?
The CRTC. That is, if they actually do stop them instead of bowing to their lobbying again.
 
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