NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Bell Canada proposal to cap wholesale customers
Bell Canada has submitted a proposal to the CRTC to allow it to cap bandwidth usage of wholesale customers (mostly independent ISPs). The independent ISPs are concerned that this will essentially eliminate the possibility of 'unlimited bandwidth' type offerings to their customers. The submission from Bell Canada also comes at an interesting time when the CRTC has recently allowed it to throttle wholesale customers for 'network management' purposes. In addition there are CRTC public hearings scheduled in the next few months to investigate the general issues relating to network management and throttling. http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/04/14/bell-unlimited-download.ht ml?ref=rss Bell Canada has been struggling to be profitable over the last decade or so - my guess is that this translates into a lack of investment in infrastructure upgrades. Now it seems that they are trying to find any means of avoiding spending the larger sums of money now required to bring their networks to a standard that will support current Internet usage patterns. There is also a clear anti-competitive aspect to the impacts on wholesale customers where throttling and capping force independent ISPs to limit their offerings to be similar to what Bell Canada Internet Service already offers to it's residential customers.