Benad's Web Site

A quick post to vent out. I hate Bell Canada. I hate them. I went to the trouble of canceling my 3-year cellphone contract with them because they were actively, several times, trying to scam me, with the worst customer support ever. Their business practices are downright shady and borders on illegal.

And so a couple of months ago they started to throttle P2P traffic (encryption doesn't work), reduced all their plans to metered (with a hidden 200GB limit where you get "punished" by being almost completely cut off with no recourse), and increased fees across the board. So I was about to switch to Teksavvy in mid-April, which should have removed P2P shaping and give me better rates.

And now this: starting April 7, Bell will throttle P2P on wholesalers ISP traffic (Globe and Mail article here), without notice, against CRTC regulations which DOES NOT ALLOW Bell to handle TCP, IP or anything below PPPoE frame packets. This is illegal monopolistic action. Acanac, one of the ISPs, is already considering litigation.

OK, so switching won't solve my P2P shaping problem. But then, I'll save money, and it will be a good way to tell Bell Canada that I hate them, won't do business with them ever again, and help support Teksavvy in their litigation against Bell.

Next step, figuring out how to change my residential phone, using yakHomePhone or something like that...

Update March 31: Here is the real effect of their traffic shaping. Basically Bell kills over 60% of Teksavvy's bandwidth.

Published on March 25, 2008 at 16:15 EDT

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