Bell pwns ISPs
Last week Bell started to throttle all traffic on their network, including wholesale traffic sold to independent ISPs. This means TekSavvy is screwed. I used to think there were laws that prevented this from happening, but it doesn't seem to be the case. Having open networks encourages competition, which is good for the consumer. It also encourages faster adoption of technology, and in Ontario's case, I think it's worked quite well. I don't have any numbers to back up this claim, but I think Southern Ontario is very highly connected, because of availability and price. Even talking to my sister, who says very few people in NYC have personal connections, even though it is widely available there becauce of the population density. She says most people use text messaging, instead of IM, because of convenience and price, whereas it is opposite here.
Now I can only hope for the CRTC to change the rules, and that will take a long time and might not happen because of government lobbying. Honestly, I think Bell can create a market for this, because there is demand. I wonder if they considered charging even more for bandwidth during peak times. This would be sold through 3rd party ISPs who could provide it to customers who desired this. The pricing would have to be high enough so that Bell would have enough money so that they could reinvest this money into their networks to grow it and handle the extra demand. And for me personally, I don't mind paying higher prices for unrestricted bandwidth. I'm not even against paying higher prices for broadband to compensate artists, much like how blank CD's are taxed.
Anyway, I also wanted to comment on how much I like Ars Technica. Pandemic recommended it to me, way back, when it was a much smaller site, so props to him. In the mean time, Ars must have gotten funding from somewhere, because now the site is vastly improved. Better, because the quality of writing has remained high while adding breadth in coverage and intelligent analysis. They don't just report the news, but also provide analysis, which makes them the undisputed first place to get my tech news. Recently, I've grown to dislike Slashdot more, because of the increasingly lower signal to noise ratio, the lack of quality analysis and the heavy bias.
In conclusion, I want network neutrality and if that ever happens, I'll hear about it from Ars Technica first.
Now I can only hope for the CRTC to change the rules, and that will take a long time and might not happen because of government lobbying. Honestly, I think Bell can create a market for this, because there is demand. I wonder if they considered charging even more for bandwidth during peak times. This would be sold through 3rd party ISPs who could provide it to customers who desired this. The pricing would have to be high enough so that Bell would have enough money so that they could reinvest this money into their networks to grow it and handle the extra demand. And for me personally, I don't mind paying higher prices for unrestricted bandwidth. I'm not even against paying higher prices for broadband to compensate artists, much like how blank CD's are taxed.
Anyway, I also wanted to comment on how much I like Ars Technica. Pandemic recommended it to me, way back, when it was a much smaller site, so props to him. In the mean time, Ars must have gotten funding from somewhere, because now the site is vastly improved. Better, because the quality of writing has remained high while adding breadth in coverage and intelligent analysis. They don't just report the news, but also provide analysis, which makes them the undisputed first place to get my tech news. Recently, I've grown to dislike Slashdot more, because of the increasingly lower signal to noise ratio, the lack of quality analysis and the heavy bias.
In conclusion, I want network neutrality and if that ever happens, I'll hear about it from Ars Technica first.
posted by Nelson at 6:37 PM
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