Canada's broadband sucks, and is expensive to boot: Harvard.
Canada "is often thought of as a very high performer, based on the most commonly used benchmark of penetration per 100 inhabitants," the study said. "Because our analysis includes important measures on which Canada has had weaker outcomes prices, speeds and 3G mobile broadband penetration in our analysis it shows up as quite a weak performer, overall."
Google to allow users to see if isp is blocking them
"When an Internet application doesn't work as expected or your
connection seems flaky, how can you tell whether there is a problem
caused by your broadband ISP (Internet service provider), the
application, your PC (personal computer), or something else?" Cerf
wrote in a blog post.
Bell lying in Advertising
"Bell Canada is taking an interesting approach to being called out for
lying in its ads to consumers concerning network performance: it's simply ignoring the whole thing.
Advertising Standards Canada (ASC) found that Bell Canada was being
quite misleading in claiming that Bell Canada was the "fastest network
across North America." Now, there may be different ways to judge the
speed of broadband offered on a network, and you would think that a
company would respond with some data to support its side. Bell Canada,
on the other hand, has said that it simply doesn't recognize ASC as a
legitimate organization, and therefore, it can go about its business
and advertising.
Major Canadian ISPs Slow Down P2P Traffic
"Net neutrality really is the hot topic at the moment. After the FCC
slapped Comcast for slowing down BitTorrent users, Canada is now
looking into the network management practices of its ISPs. And rightly
so, as a CRTC investigation reveals that most of the ISPs in Canada
actively slow down customers using P2P applications."
We need this ruling in Canada
In one of the most significant legal rulings in the tech industry
this year, a Superior Court judge in California has ruled that the
practice of charging consumers a fee for ending their cell phone contract early is illegal and violates state law.
The
preliminary, tentative judgment orders Sprint Nextel to pay customers
$18.2 million in reimbursements and, more importantly, orders Sprint to
stop trying to collect another $54.7 million from California customers
(some 2 million customers total) who have canceled their contracts but
refused or failed to pay the termination fee.
David Mcguinty introduces new bill
On July 11, what will you be doing?
The online petition is a great start, but what would really get the message out are protest/ picket lines in
front of all the Rogers and Fido stores in this country. Bring leaflets and signs letting anyone who has been living under a rock know the true cost of their phone.
I think the iphone is a great catalyst for bringing mainstream Canadians up to speed on a variety of issues, including Bill C-61, and the various telecommunications scandals out there, that these companies have been perpetrating.
Bell's internet throttling illegal, Google says
Google Inc. says Bell Canada Inc. is breaking Canadian
telecommunications law by slowing certain internet traffic, and is
urging the CRTC to take action against the company.
"Bell claims its throttling of peer-to-peer applications is a
reasonable form of network management. Google respectfully disagrees.
Network management does not include Canadian carriers’ blocking or
degrading lawful applications that consumers wish to use," the company
wrote in a 15-page submission to the Canadian Radio-television and
Telecommunications Commission, which was made public over the weekend.
The seesaw ride of Web throttling and copyright
Well, the last couple of weeks have been a good news/bad news seesaw
ride for those of us in the Canadian bandwidth throttling/copyright
playground.
As you may recall, last month the Canadian Association of Internet
Providers (CAIP) filed a complaint against Bell-Sympatico with CRTC.
The group represents 55 smaller Internet Service Providers (ISPs).
Those ISPs resell Bell bandwidth to their customers, many of whom make
legitimate use of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing. Other Canadian
carriers, including Rogers, also throttle P2P traffic. CAIP wanted the
CRTC to provide immediate relief from Bell's bandwidth throttling of
P2P traffic because that throttling was effecting the ISPs own
customers and making it impossible to deliver the service the ISPs
promised. The complaint was supported by more than 1,000 complaints
from individual Canadians.
ISPs fail in bid to throttle Bell's `shaping'
A group of Internet service providers that resell bandwidth on Bell
Canada Inc.'s network has lost a temporary bid to shelter their
subscribers from the phone company's practice of slowing down certain
types of Internet traffic.
The Canadian Radio-television
Telecommunications Commission yesterday turned down the Canadian
Association of Internet Providers' request for an injunction, saying
the group failed to demonstrate its members are being harmed by Bell's
efforts to "shape" the Internet traffic of its wholesale clients.
Traffic
shaping generally refers to the use of special software to sniff out
and slow down data packets associated with bandwidth-intensive services
such as file sharing.
"The Commission finds that CAIP has not
demonstrated that its members will suffer irreparable harm if the
interim relief was not granted," the CRTC said.