The Only Thing I'll Say About Bell's Traffic Shaping
The internets are abuzz.
Disgruntled consumer and wholesale customers alike are beating the drums of revolution.
Michael Geist has lively discussion.
Mark Goldberg has lively discussion.
Ahem.
Free markets dictate that if the service you are paying for is left wanting, you have the ability to take your dollars elsewhere. (once your contract is up, of course)
Free markets also dictate that a new provider will jump into the ring and take over where the incumbents have left off.
Folks who want unfettered internet access, lumping the good the bad and the ugly all-to-gether will likely be able to buy that type of service from specialized providers. There will likely soon be ISPs who are willing to take the risk, take the initiative and and jump into the swelling sea of net neutrality. But it's just not net neutrality, it's naked internet, if you will. Wild west internet. It's not a bad place, it's just a hard place to put any guarantees to. And I think that's where folks like Bell are trying to get to. More people want guaranteed internet than unfettered internet. To get to a place where you can have guarantees, you've got to be able to control some of the nuttiness that's going on inside your walls.
That being said - it's sort of odd that they are also throttling/shaping their wholesale service - but from what I'm reading, they are shaping the last mile, as opposed to the traffic heading out-to and back in from the internet. That's a bit of a dog's breakfast - traffic shaping at the DLS level. In theory, that's private network. Shared network, but private none-the-less. ISP resellers are going to have to figure out what they want to do to get out of that storm. They need to figure out their own guarantees and dedicated infrastructure from the BELL central offices back to their own networks. Maybe they have to shift away from buying shared network services, to buying dedicated network services. If the end user wants, nay, demands unfettered internet, I think there's got to be a premium for that as well.
Maybe Barrett Xplore has the right idea by building their own last mile?
I'm going to track down ISPs in Ontario who aren't affected by traffic shaping from their upstream providers, and list them here. :-)
Technorati Tags: Bell Canada, traffic shaping, throttling, Michael Geist, Mark Goldberg
Disgruntled consumer and wholesale customers alike are beating the drums of revolution.
Michael Geist has lively discussion.
Mark Goldberg has lively discussion.
Ahem.
Free markets dictate that if the service you are paying for is left wanting, you have the ability to take your dollars elsewhere. (once your contract is up, of course)
Free markets also dictate that a new provider will jump into the ring and take over where the incumbents have left off.
Folks who want unfettered internet access, lumping the good the bad and the ugly all-to-gether will likely be able to buy that type of service from specialized providers. There will likely soon be ISPs who are willing to take the risk, take the initiative and and jump into the swelling sea of net neutrality. But it's just not net neutrality, it's naked internet, if you will. Wild west internet. It's not a bad place, it's just a hard place to put any guarantees to. And I think that's where folks like Bell are trying to get to. More people want guaranteed internet than unfettered internet. To get to a place where you can have guarantees, you've got to be able to control some of the nuttiness that's going on inside your walls.
That being said - it's sort of odd that they are also throttling/shaping their wholesale service - but from what I'm reading, they are shaping the last mile, as opposed to the traffic heading out-to and back in from the internet. That's a bit of a dog's breakfast - traffic shaping at the DLS level. In theory, that's private network. Shared network, but private none-the-less. ISP resellers are going to have to figure out what they want to do to get out of that storm. They need to figure out their own guarantees and dedicated infrastructure from the BELL central offices back to their own networks. Maybe they have to shift away from buying shared network services, to buying dedicated network services. If the end user wants, nay, demands unfettered internet, I think there's got to be a premium for that as well.
Maybe Barrett Xplore has the right idea by building their own last mile?
I'm going to track down ISPs in Ontario who aren't affected by traffic shaping from their upstream providers, and list them here. :-)
Technorati Tags: Bell Canada, traffic shaping, throttling, Michael Geist, Mark Goldberg
Update on 2008-03-28 11:02 by jules
Ok.
I can’t find a single ISP so far who isn’t impacted by throttling, either by their own hand or by someone else’s.
That being said - this issue has been pulled fully into the mainstream:
The Globe covers a Rogers Deliberate Pricing Change