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An internal memo at Bell Mobility has been leaked. In this memo, Bell Mobility is considering interfering with the phone’s GPS receiver to prevent it from being that accurate, unless you subscribe to the service provided by Bell Mobility for GPS use on its phones.

From the Article:

Users of free GPS mapping applications (such as Google Maps or even the included Blackberry Maps application by RIM) will see the time required to establish a GPS lock increase to 2-10 minutes, up from the typical 15-20 seconds usually experienced. Additionally, there is some speculation that the resolution of GPS data will also be reduced to a 1-2.5km range as opposed to the existing 10-25m accuracy currently provided — not exactly useful when trying to find the location for your next meeting downtown in an unfamiliar city.

Bell Canada is at it again. The CBC is reporting that Bell Canada is preparing to limit the downloads of the ISPs that purchase wholesale internet service from them. This would restrict the bandwidth they can use, and almost ensure there is no way to differentiate the services.

Bell Canada Inc. is moving to impose download limits on customers of independent internet providers, an act the smaller firms say is designed to eliminate broadband competition and prevent the introduction of new television services.

One of the ISP’s that we all know: TekSavvy

Rocky Gaudreault, president of TekSavvy, said Bell’s proposal was unacceptable because it would eliminate the last way in which the smaller wholesale ISPs can differentiate their services.

It is time that the the Internet backbone connections in Canada were leveled away from business and made available for a common fee to everyone. Bell would lose their lines, and Rogers would lose the cable infrastructure. For a reasonable fee and profit, companies could then lease these lines and provide services to Canadians. You could get your choice of cable provider, not be forced into one by where you live.

If you want DSL internet, then pick a supplier that is leasing the space and go with their services. Let the free market economy determine who wins. Do not allow the providers of the service to own the underlining infrastructure. Bell’s telephone lines were mostly pushed out when they were controlled as a Crown Corporation, but Rogers has built their own. Pay them a reasonable fee, or split the service from the main company into a new carrier, one for cable, one for copper telephone lines, and set the profits at a reasonable level and have an upper price cap. They can complete for market dominance by lowering prices to see who provides services on which technology. Expanding the offerings would also be included and can have reasonable rates of return built in.

It is time to return the Internet and the access to it to Canadians.

Bell Canada has responded to the CRTC concerning their internet throttling practices based on the congestion on the network for each month since March, 2007. I have not seen a single congestion indicator over 10%. What a joke these guys are trying to pull by saying that congestion was high.

Warning, this is where the spin attempts to begin:

As can be observed in the table above, the total percentage of all four types of congested network links during a given month in the period in question has varied between 2.6% and 5.2%. While these numbers may seem low to the average lay person, they are significant to network traffic engineers such that it is important to consider the number of congested links in the proper context.

The complete, public filed document in PDF is here and the supplementary information is here.

As of today, Bell Canada has begun selling a competing online movie/music service that is not throttled and therefore enjoys a download benefit. This gives Bell Canada an unfair advantage in online movie rental sales simply because they happen to control the connection to the internet for many Canadians.

Michael Geist’s Coverage

The Canadian Association of Internet Providers has sent a letter to the CRTC on the Bell throttling issue. This is a good sign, since they are basically trying to get Bell to stop all special routing of the reseller data. This should make the competition competitive again, and ultimately, force Bell to stop throttling their customers so they can compete with the resellers. This is a big step forward for net neutrality if the CRTC sides with the complainants.

The best part is that the complaint also goes after the whole throttling issue using the Privacy laws of Canada, since the company has to perform deep packet analysis to properly decide which packets to slow down and which ones not to. Because of this level of
inspection, they are able to trace the packets to the actual originator, which might be against the company’s allowed use of the information passing on its network, and a privacy violation. This may turn out to be great for consumers if the CRTC rules that Bell cannot do the throttling they are. If Bell loses, then someone will surely push the point and force Rogers and the others to drop their throttling as well.

Here’s hoping the CRTC makes themselves useful and does the right thing in stopping this practice of throttling and saving the internet for Canadians to use at it was intended.

Michael Geist has a great review of the document as it is not online yet.

Here we go, while AT&T has safe harbor provisions in the US DMCA for items crossing its network, it has announced that AT&T wants to work with the MPAA and RIAA and filter illegal content on their networks.

What happens when they get a copyright complaint, such as the SCO lawsuit against Linux? Does this mean that for the years of court action to see if there is a copyright violation that Linux is not available for download to anyone on AT&T? Can you see Microsoft taking advantage of this, as well as other companies to limit availability to competing items?

I think this is another strong case for Net Neutrality, where the packets should be allowed to flow regardless of what they contain. Filtering can only lead to stronger filtering for things that AT&T thinks people should not see. As a private company, who will know what they are blocking and what they are not?

This is a bad, Orwellian idea, that the Americans should realize is not in the best interest. Hopefully, the ISPs in Canada do not follow suit, or we will all be in trouble.

Who is this Terence Corcoran from the Financial Post? Does he have a clue as to what he is talking about? The Canadian version of the US DMCA is a joke as far as common sense. The Sony Rootkit is a perfect example of what can happen when companies run unchecked, and consumer interests are ignored.

If the iTune you download can only be used on your iPod, that’s an assault on your rights.”

This sentence is a joke. If I buy a CD today, I can listen to it on my home stereo, or on my computer, and in my car or at a friends house. With the DRM Mr. Corcoran is advocating with his sentence, would limit me to just one location. How is this better for the consumer, and how can he defend this?

His stance on net-neutrality also looks like he is owned by the Telecom companies. When the Telecom companies can dictate what we get from the internet and what will be censored, then it will be too late. We need to ensure that Net Neutrality is a reality. Maybe when his column is not available to anyone because the Telecom companies have decided to not deliver it since it is critical of them and he does not get paid, maybe then he will realize why we are trying to stand up for Net Neutrality.

According to a recent post of Michael Geist’s Rogers is changing your viewing experience without you even knowing it. This is not on TV, but rather on your internet connection.

Lauren Weinstein posted a screen shot of the attempt of Rogers to impose their advertising over top of the normal Google screen.

On the surface, this does not seem to be too bad based on the message, but this does not have to be what they show you. The search could be performed by Rogers Search Engine in the future, with Rogers paying advertisers showing up first in the list, instead of the Google search that was expected.

This is a clear example of why Net Neutrality needs to made into law and the Canadian, and other, ISPs forced to follow it.

Check out these quotes from Michael Geist that he found from Rogers Executives.

* Tom Turner, the VP and GM of Rogers High Speed Internet is quoted in the article as saying “to make sure we have optimized performance for our customers, time sensitive and immediate uses such as web surfing and e-mail are given priority. We don’t traffic shape.”
* Ken Englehart, Rogers Regulatory VP, who said in the letter to the editor that Rogers is not “degrading encrypted traffic” and that “our equipment ensures network capacity is reserved for such services as email and Web surfing, and peer-to-peer traffic does not overwhelm the system.”
* Tanta Gupta, Rogers spokesperson, who told that Globe and Mail in 2006 that the company uses bandwidth shaping to slow file-sharing applications.

Do these people even know what they are saying. ‘We don’t traffic shape’ yet the give priority to sensitive and immediate uses such as web surfing and email. What the ??? This is traffic shaping!!

They constantly give statements, that even in the one quotation contradicts what they are saying. It is time to get rid of these pseudo monopolies (only 2 choices really for high speed internet) and to also enact laws for Net Neutrality so new protocols, and existing ones co-exist properly.

I will concede that we might need to allow DNS lookups to be routed faster since this is needed to get to a web page, but I am not sold on this since a general slow down in the internet will effect everything, which is good, and then DNS attacks will also not be as viable since they too will slow down, while the rest of the internet could keep on flowing normally.

In what I have been harping on about for a while, Canada’s largest media company is also calling for Net Neutrality so they can pursue online distribution of their media. While a Rogers or Bell could limit the bandwidth available to Corus (similar to the current limits on bittorrent) to push their own media properties.

Michael Geist has a good article covering his recent article and the feedback the companies are providing to the CRTC.