Canada’s Internet Service Providers Can Legally Limit Your Bandwidth

The Canadian government has ruled that it is okay for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to restrict the speed, quality and signal strength to high-use customers.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) which regulates ISPs in the country announced its long awaited decision earlier this week, taking a typically Canadian approach – right down the middle of the road.

When an ISP’s customer – someone like you – downloads large multimedia files (such as movies, playing online graphic intensive games, or streaming audio or video) you take up a lot of lanes on the information superhighway. These packets of data travel on the Internet’s network of roads and highways – commonl

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y called bandwidth.

The more bandwidth you use, the less is available for other people using that same ISP for their Internet. To control this, and provide enough bandwidth for all users, ISPs have been known to limit the amount of bandwidth available to those taking up the most – this is called “throttling.”

Prior to this week’s announcement by the CRTC, different ISPs had very different views on whether throttling was an ethical and even a legal practice – after all, you pay for a certain amount of bandwidth usually when you sign a contract with an ISP. The last thing you’d expect is to have your ISP limit just how much of that bandwidth you’ve paid for.

Some ISPs in Canada were against the whole practice of throttling, saying it was up to them to increase their networks, to constantly grow with their customer demand.

Other ISPs claimed although they constantly expand their networks, it isn’t fair for a handful of users to use up most of the bandwidth, taking it away from other paying customers of the network.

Others were awkwardly silent on the issue, with claims from their users that they were being “throttled” but when questioned, these ISPs would neither confirm nor deny these allegations.

The CRTC has ruled in favor of ISPs, giving them the legal right to throttle their high-bandwidth customers – but they must provide at least 30-days notice to retail customers, and 60-days notice to re-sellers of their services.

This provides a sense of comfort to all – but it could be just a false sense. You as a retail customer – someone who buys Internet service directly from an ISP – will get at least a month’s notice if your ISP will limit your bandwidth.

However, the ruling by Canada’s ISP regulator fails to provide any means for consumers to take any real action. The CRTC did allow for a complaints process, so that you can make a formal complaint to them about your ISPs throttling, which will be investigated on a case-by-case basis.

But that would take time – all the while, your ISP could be throttling your access to the Internet. And even if your complaint is judged worthy and investigated by the CRTC, there is no guarantee that they will rule in your favor.

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That said, they could easily rule on the side of consumers, just as easily as they can rule on the side of the ISP – all this is new ground, so it remains to be seen just how everything will play out.

The good points from this ruling – now ISPs have to provide notice to their customers if they intend to limit their bandwidth. And the complaints process allows for some sort of dispute mechanism, for consumers and re-sellers who feel unfairly limited in bandwidth.

The bad news from all of this, in these tough economic times, it could slow down the expansion of our country’s Internet, because it is cheaper – and now legal – to limit individual use, rather than spending more on building the technological infrastructure necessary to increase the capabilities of the networks.

Again, as all of this is new – Canada is now the first and only country with laws regulating the limiting of bandwidth – only time will tell.

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Is Broadband Internet Access a Legal Right?

Those Europeans are at it again – pioneering the future for the Internet with their whacky ways.

The latest – Finland has become the first country in the world to boldly declare broadband Internet access a legal right. As of July 2010, all telecommunications companies doing business in that country must provide broadband Internet services of at least one-megabit per second or face fines.

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That means all 5.2 million citizens in the northern European nation will have broadband Internet access. Though that won’t be hard for the small country, Finland is one of the most net-friendly places on the planet, with about 95 percent of the population already online.

And that one-megabit per second mandate will grow over time – that’s just to start out and facilitate the transition so that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Finland can expand their high-speed broadband networks to the rural areas that don’t presently have such services.

By 2015, the mandate requiring telecommunications companies to provide broadband access to the Internet will have increased from one-megabit per second up to 100-megabits per second.

Finland’s new law is part of a growing philosophy in Europe where the Internet is considered as vital a part of life as water, food and shelter.

This past June, the highest court in France declared access to the Internet a fundamental human right. This came on the heels of a major campaign by the United Nations (UN) to its member countries, which lays out the new basic essentials of life in a modern society, which include access to the Internet.

Many other studies have been done on our basic needs in this modern world, and if one were to compile a list based on these studies, the new world order requires:

• Healthy food to fuel our bodies
• Safe and secure shelter to protect us from Mother Nature’s wrath
• Clean drinking water to prevent dehydration
• Clothes which protect against the elements of the natural environment
• Electricity to power much needed electronics such as lights to see, fridges to store food, stoves to cook that food and heaters to keep us warm
• Safe and proper waste disposal, to prevent the spread of disease and death
• Banking or monetary services to be able to purchase these basic needs when they run out
• A communications system to keep in touch with the outside world

Most industrialized countries around the world have policies in place to promote high-speed broadband (as opposed to lower speed, narrowband dial-up) access to the international network of networks circling the globe, collectively called the “Internet.”

Canada’s government has mandated that the telecommunications providers wire Canada’s north, bringing broadband Internet to the country’s northern regions – that’s part of the reasoning behind the network access fees ISPs charge (a similar fee is also charged by cell phone and digital television providers, for the same reasons). These fees are supposed to be used to pay for the costs of expanding the digital communications networks by the ISPs, and other carriers.

Years ago, the nation’s largest phone company – Bell Canada – complained loudly about this government initiative, claiming they were being singled out by the Canadian government just because they were so big. However, all providers have since picked up the slack, and are also collecting various fees from their subscribers to maintain and expand their digital broadband networks.

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Ironically, one of the most powerful nations on planet Earth doesn’t have such a plan. The United States of America is the only industrialized nation not to have a formally recognized plan to promote, maintain and expand high-speed broadband Internet access to its citizens, according to a study released this past August by one of the country’s largest organized labor unions, the Communications Workers of America.

However, an American national plan is anticipated in February 2010, when the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is expected to submit such a proposal to Congress.

Still, Americans are falling behind the Europeans, as Finland is the first – and only country so far – to legally declare access to broadband Internet a human right. Other European nations are expected to follow Finlands example in the coming years.

Although the Internet is an amazing tool for communications, is it a fundamental human right? Some form of communications should be a fundamental human right. One would have thought that the telephone would win that honor.

Think about it, during an emergency situation, what’s the first thing most of us would do – aside from panic? CALL 9-1-1 (or your local emergency number) using a TELEPHONE.

Most of us have email, some form of instant messaging program, and many even have the ability to place telephone calls over the Internet, using programs like Skype.

But if your house is on fire, are you really going to run to your computer and email the fire department? If you get into a car accident, are you going to tweet for a tow truck on Twitter? If a mugger attempts to rob you as you walk home from a night out with friends, are you going to instant message the police?

The Internet is a great resource for those trying to connect with family and friends during a major traumatic event. It has been used to help coordinate messages of hope, raise funds for victims, even as a way for friends and family to locate loved ones during major catastrophes such as Hurricane Katrina in Mexico and the southern U.S., the Asia-Pacific Rim Tsunami, the forest fires off the west coast of North America, even the Red River flooding in Manitoba, Canada and other natural disasters.

But for immediate response with emergency workers, we use the telephone.

Yes, you can do so much more with the Internet than a phone. But playing online games, downloading movies, and poking someone on Facebook aren’t nearly as important as the ability to instantly connect with live-saving resources when they are needed.

Sure, we can conduct important life-changing tasks online, from banking, ordering food, even applying for a new way to earn a living.

But until the police, fire and ambulance services are just a point and click away, the telephone is the communications technology which should be a fundamental human right in the industrialized world.

The Internet is important, but not something our lives really depend upon.

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How Canadian ISPs May Control Your Internet Experience

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) across Canada have different ways and views on how to manage their networks. At issue, network resources for playing online games, sharing files peer-to-peer, watching online videos, and other types of high-bandwidth content, which many of us take for granted.

ISPs across the country are struggling to manage customers who use high-bandwidth content more frequently than most on their network, claiming if they don’t do something, their other customers online experiences will suffer.

Currently the Internet in Canada is as it was when it began everywhere else – wild and free. There are no rules for how your ISP manages their network resources, just so long as they provide you with the services you pay for.

That’s created a big debate across the country, and as with many national issues, the government has been called in to create the laws and regulations governing how your ISP manages their network – which in the end will deeply affect how you use the Internet.

How is the wild and free Internet being tamed by your ISP?

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ISPs typically use one of two methods to control your use of high-bandwidth content – throttling and download limits. Some ISPs use a combination of both methods.

Throttling is when the ISP intentionally slows down the flow of information sent and received over its network based on specific types of applications. Some ISPs are known to reduce the bandwidth availability for peer-to-peer file sharing applications, such as Torrent sites, others will limit bandwidth available for playing live online games, and some will even reduce the bandwidth for sending and receiving email messages.

Some ISPs will have different packages or levels of service available for different monthly amounts, each level having its own data transfer limit. These are usually based on price per month, so the higher priced packages allow you to send and receive more information, while the lower priced packages have lower monthly data transfer limits. The price of the package is often connected with the maximum download speed allocated to that level. For example, one ISP may sell its lowest cost package at $19.95 month, which gives you 3 Megabits per second (Mbps) of download bandwidth, and a monthly data transfer (up and down total) of 10 Gigabytes (GB). The same ISP may have their highest package priced at $99.95 per month, giving you 19mbps of download bandwidth, and a monthly data transfer (up and down total) of 95GB.

If you exceed the monthly data transfer limit, you aren’t cut off, and banned from using the Internet until your next month – that would aggravate even the most understanding of customers. Instead, you are simply charged an additional fee for every Megabyte or Gigabyte worth of data transferred, above your monthly limit.

So, how does this affect me?

Customers of ISPs that throttle selected high-bandwidth applications complain that they are being discriminated against. Who gave the ISP the right to decide which applications deserve more or less bandwidth? By deciding which applications are throttled, the ISP is in a sense, condoning some behaviours while negating others.

And there is also the argument, that by deciding which applications to throttle and which ones to ignore, ISPs could essentially shape the very direction new developments and new technologies go. For example, if peer-to-peer file sharing is constantly limited by ISPs, than this technology won’t develop or spawn other similar technologies, because of the way ISPs view them.

For those who have data transfer limits and fees, this impacts how much they can do online. You may never go over your data transfer limit, but one month, discover a new high-broadband-based Internet portal, and get hit with a giant unexpected bill the next month.

This is highly conceivable, as more and more technologies converge, which increase bandwidth used, often in unexpected ways. For example, a new trend is in wireless home security systems, where people can set a series of wireless cameras around their home. These cameras send video and still images over your wireless network to your computer, and can email and even stream these images and video live to you over the Internet. This way, you can be at work, and still see a live video stream of your kid’s room, to keep an eye on your children.

At first blush it doesn’t appear to cost much to install such a system – but if you exceed your monthly bandwidth limit, your next high-speed Internet bill could be quite a bit larger than you expected.

Where’s all of this going?

Today, the Canadian Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) which regulates radio, television and the Internet in Canada launched hearings into these issues, to try and figure out how to proceed.

Do ISPs have the right to decide which applications to throttle and which not too? Is it fair for ISPs to charge service fees for exceeding monthly data transfer limits? Is it right to have these limits in the first place? Do ISPs have the right to monitor all the information sent and received on their networks, to determine pricing packages, service fees, and data transfer limits?

These questions – and many more – will be the subject of debate for the foreseeable future, as Canada’s regulator hears from ISPs, small, medium and big business and regular Canadians like you and me, all tossing in their Two-cents worth on the future of the Internet in one of the most wired countries on the planet.

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