Canada Rules To Uphold Net Neutrality (www.cbc.ca) 65
According to a new ruling by Canada's telecommunications regulator, internet service providers should not be able to exempt certain types of content, such as streaming music or video, from counting toward a person's data cap. The ruling upholds net neutrality, which is the principle that all web services should be treated equally by providers. CBC.ca reports: "Rather than offering its subscribers selected content at different data usage prices, Internet service providers should be offering more data at lower prices," said Jean-Pierre Blais, chairman of the CRTC in a statement. "That way, subscribers can choose for themselves what content they want to consume." The decision stems from a 2015 complaint against the wireless carrier Videotron, which primarily operates in Quebec. Videotron launched a feature in August of that year, enabling customers to stream music from services such as Spotify and Google Play Music without it counting against a monthly data cap as a way to entice people to subscribe to Videotron's internet service. The decision means that Videotron cannot offer its unlimited music streaming plan to subscribers in its current form -- nor can other internet providers offer similar plans that zero-rate other types of internet content, such as video streaming or social media.
Re:No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Please, please tell me why Google Play Music should be free while Bob's Music Shop down the street would cost to stream the exact same songs?
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But off net content bears additional charges to an ISP then on-net costs. There are reasons that most ISP's - the same ones who provide cable TV - host netflix servers on-site.
The issue is that every ISP could arguably use this as an advantage against any competing business and that would suppress competition.
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rays music exchange takes IOU's
Re:No. (Score:4, Insightful)
Please, please tell me why Google Play Music should be free while Bob's Music Shop down the street would cost to stream the exact same songs?
Because Google can store the music on servers on its own network and not rely on pulling data in from a peer.
This is why it probably makes sense to split such companies up into physical connection companies and content providers, since the physical connection companies have a built-in advantage for providing content.
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Gee, wish we could force this to happen to cable tv providers and content...
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Gee, wish we could force this to happen to cable tv providers and content...
Yeah, I don't care as much about Google as I do Comcast. They at least just added netflix to their set top box, but I don't think it'll do 4K video yet.
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That's the internet, but content producers can't be forced to play.
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Because Google can store the music on servers on its own network and not rely on pulling data in from a peer.
And that network is not behind my connection to my ISP? Since otherwise it wouldn't make any sense whatsoever not to count it toward my data cap.
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Because Google can store the music on servers on its own network and not rely on pulling data in from a peer.
And that network is not behind my connection to my ISP? Since otherwise it wouldn't make any sense whatsoever not to count it toward my data cap.
They pay less to carry that traffic because they don't have to bring it in through a peer.
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Streaming services such as Netflix provide ISPs what are essentially servers stuffed with drives that provide a local cache to their streaming content. This means you don't end up using bandwidth between the ISP and their Tier 1 provider for that type of content. While the CRTC are saying that should still count toward your data cap, it can also be considerably less expensive for the ISP.
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Re:No. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: No. (Score:1)
It's far more insidious and darker than that.
All publicly traded, for-profit businesses have two general classes or types of customer: not individuals and businesses, (they often have one, the other, or both,) but I mean, they have consumers of their goods and services, traditionally thought of as their customers, and then there are the OTHER customers. The ones who invest, or loan them, their money, and who OWN the thing. They must make one happy, as a minimum to be successful. When such an organization ma
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Please, please tell me why Google Play Music should be free while Bob's Music Shop down the street would cost to stream the exact same songs?
That's not even the main problem. Why would streaming music be free while reading slashdot isn't?
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Having a preferential rate for one particular internet service over another (or, for that matter, having an exception for certain paid-for services) is the exact opposite of net neutrality. And from a network engineering standpoint, it means ensuring you have adequate bandwidth to upstream hosts. The idea of the internet is meant to be that it's fault tolerant and multi-homed, so if a route is congested or at capacity, packets can be routed through another path to get to the same host, albeit at a slightly
Re:No. (Score:5, Informative)
FTA [canada.ca]:
The CBC basically got it wrong by generalizing the word services when in fact the government is talking about data types (data stream, web, email, voip...etc).
The government is basically saying they will not allow ISPs to throttle data types that are considered to be bandwidth consuming. The broad strokes here are that Netflix won't be going at a snail's pace and your gaming bandwidth won't dry up in Canada or the ISP will face regulatory charges and also be required to compensate users for breaking the law.
tl;dr: this is a set of "non-interference" regulations that bind ISPs from screwing over their customers.
Re: No. (Score:2)
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It's a good thing that Net Neutrality has nothing to do with banning QOS, then.
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He means traffic. And not treating paid-for or lobbied-for traffic with preferential speed priorities.
In real life this would mean letting the regular four door sedan family car drive on the same road as the fancy corporate limousine. Who cares that one is some anonymous schmuck driving to the lake, and the other one is carrying high-profile personalities to a paid event? They both ride the same roads and it should be that way.
You know what OP meant.
Re:fraud ISP = obama internet (Score:4, Informative)
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I don't think our broadband is worse up here. I get 150mbit/s access with Shaw Cable with a 1TB cap for only $80/mon CDN. Shaw has been providing great speeds at good prices for over a decade now.
Now, Rogers and Bell could be worse from what I hear.
Beanfield is a rather small fibre ISP for condos (Score:2)
They pluck the low-hanging fruit. A quote from their own website... https://www.beanfield.com/resi... [beanfield.com]
> Beanfield is condos. We are primarily focused on servicing condominiums
> in high density areas at the moment. We are working as fast as
> we can to hook up as many buildings each month as possible.
The concept works great in downtown Toronto in a highrise condo. An average residence... not so much.
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Well the city I live in was a village ~180 years ago. It was incorporated as town just after WWI, a city just after WWII. If you're dealing with Bell, there are many areas of the city where 5/1 DSL is it. There's no FTTN, no FTTH either. Telephone service? Most of the wiring is all original from the early 1900's, lots of homes still have the very old big block graphite lightening strike resistors in them too which cause more problems. Rogers? Well they offer 150/15Mbps because almost 20 years ago th
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Canadian broadband really depends on where you live, but in my experience while it's quite expensive everywhere, it's fairly fast and reliable in Western Canada and much less so in Eastern Canada.
At least that's my personal experience with BC vs Ontario
* Bell=Suck
* Rogers=Suck
* Shaw=Good, though not cheap
* Telus Fibre=Good (though Telus tech support is kinda suck as they love to blame you for issues on their end)
Data caps (Score:1)
How about just get rid of data caps. My300/100 connection is uncapped with Bell. Why can't it be that way everywhere in Canada?
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That's what the CRTC is trying to do with this ruling. By having all traffic count towards your cap, consumers will reasonably demand that their caps be increased. And given that caps are relatively cheap, then raising them costs very little additional money to the iSP.
By doing this ruling, they're making sure users of Netflix etc., who may have been zero rated start demanding that
so if you have iptv from bell it will kill your ca (Score:2)
so if you have iptv from bell it will kill your cap? just from there TV system being on?
Re:so if you have iptv from bell it will kill your (Score:5, Informative)
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This is the same argument videotron is using ... it's our OWN streaming service, from our OWN servers, over our OWN network. It really doesn't work well when the ISP is also the content provider (i.e. vertical integration).
Except it's not. From TFA (emphasis mine):
Videotron launched a feature in August of that year, enabling customers to stream music from services such as Spotify and Google Play Music without it counting against a monthly data cap
So, they're external services (Spotify and Google Play Music). If it was a internally hosted service, it wouldn't be an issue.
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This gets to be a tough subject. Where I live you have 3 options for TV service:
- Satellite (sucks once you get used to modern cable/iptv offerings)
- Cable from the cable company
- IPTV from the phone company
From an end user perspective, the Cable and IPTV offerings are identical, but behind the scenes they are very different, cable is it's own path and doesn't exist as an IP service on the customer's network, but IPTV does.
If you stop allowing zero rating of the IPTV service, you put the phone company at a
Blame Canada (Score:3)
Or move there. The difference is starting to move into the embarrassing zone. Check your kevlar vest at the border, and oh, if you forgot to buy your travel medical it won't cost you $30k to get back home if you happen to break your leg running away from a moose.
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old Woody Allen stand up routine
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Body armour is actually restricted in Canada. It's only available to emergency services personnel, owning it otherwise is illegal. (A policy I happen to disagree with, but I don't make the laws)
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Live by the Cap, Die by the Cap... (Score:2)
How I read this.
The ISP's lobbied for the ability of data Caps, then they wanted to selectively take advantage of not using Caps for their own services for a competitive advantage for their own benefit... Live by the Cap, Die by the Cap I say! They want to have their cake and eat it...
For the most part, 2 or 3 companies own everything in the Canadian telecommunication world, so them doing this (other than international impacts) really is a more less level playing field between them. That said, there are oth
One flaw in net neutrality (Score:2)
There are others, to be sure, but the fact that AT&T is building FirstNet as a dedicated network for law enforcement and "first responders" illustrates a fundamental flaw in net neutrality. Not all content is equally important.
Facebook argued AGAINST net neutrality? (Score:2)
Interesting that Facebook is lobbying FOR net neutrality in the US but argued AGAINST it in Canada. I guess they're sufficiently entrenched in zero-rating deals up north.