Though I do not support the idea of "speed throttling" because those who pay for the services of a certain speed from an ISP should expect to receive it without limit, I do not understand what all the hoopla is. After all, broadband ISPs have been doing this for years. Why is it becoming such an issue now?

Another way that ISPs are limiting their users is by dictating how much bandwidth can be used per day or month. For example, here in northeast Kansas, there is a cable company called Sunflower Cablevision (aka Sunflower Broadband) that limits users of their most-subscribed home Internet service to only 6GB of data transfer a month. Once that limit is reached, they throttle the user down to less than dial-up speeds. They then depend on the customer to call in and complain so they can say explain the reason for the throttling. If one is lucky, he will be able to convince Sunflower to remove the speed limit but he will also need to pay extra money for each 1GB over the aforementioned limit that he uses through the end of the billing cycle.

I find this highly objectionable because, when you work it out, one pays $40 for 6GB over a 30-day period. That means that a person is permitted to transfer (combined both up and down) only 204.8MB per day. That is about 8.53MB per hour, which equates to about 2.4K per second. In other words, the speed is limited to about the same as the SupraModem 2400 baud modem that I used back about 20 years ago when I ran a BBS. Given the fact that they offer a 7Mbps connection for that price of $40 per month, one should be able to expect to use that speed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That would equate to a full 2214GB if one used his full connection speed for the entire month.

I used to be a customer of Sunflower but happily switched away to another ISP who does not have any transfer limits. (However, they do occasionally (but not always) limit transfer speeds when overall network usage is anomalously high. I have seen that occur only twice in the past several months.)

My suggestion to anyone who has an unscrupulous company such as Sunflower is to ask questions about their policies before agreeing to use their services and make sure to keep on top of their changes in terms so that they do not create surprises later.

Cillchaoi's math is sound, but his understanding of ISP business models is not. If ISPs priced their services based on 24x7 continuous consumption by all users, they'd have to charge considerably more than $40 per month for a 7 Mbps connection (to cover their bandwidth and physical network infrastructure costs).

The $40 per month price point is only practical because the vast majority of users consume only a fraction of the theoretical maximum. And the reason that ISP crack down on excessive use is to ensure that they can continue to operate their services profitably and still offer reasonable quality of service to other customers. In the long run, ISPs have to do this sort of thing, or they risk going out of business, by the way. Based on reported financial results, it's clear that most ISPs are not currently making huge windfall profits, so it's not as thought they could afford to absorb dramatic consumption increases within current pricing structures.*

Where I cry foul is when ISPs aren't clear with customers that there are consumption caps, and then they hit customers with punitive measures. This is clearly not fair. I'd like ISPs to provide clear consumption limit guidelines, and provide customers with tools that help them manage their bandwidth consumption to stay within those limits. A simple example: You spend an evening watching videos on YouTube and surfing. How much data did you download? If you don't know, how can you easily stay within a 6GB/month limit?

To answer Cillchaoi's first question ("Why is it becoming such an issue now?"): Because, with the rising popularity of P2P file sharing, VoIP, and multi-media streaming, more and more people are consuming bandwidth at rates outside the pricing model that support $40/month connectivity. ISPs can try to raise prices (good luck!) or shape usage to match their business models. They are much more likely to do the latter, especially if that shaping impacts only a small percentage of their customer base.

*Disclosure: I don't work for or own an ISP, but I provide network management software to ISPs, so I understand their business models and financial challenges.

Dajomu, I do not know whether you are a network engineer or have worked as one in the past but I am a network engineer with 15 years of experience under my belt who has worked for the likes of State Farm (at their corporate offices in Bloomington, Illinois, the owners of the largest privately-owned network in the world), various school districts, the federal government, hospitals, and the list continues. I shall say that the cost of the bandwidth usage is actually minimal. It costs more in administration to monitor the bandwidth usage on a per-account basis than the bandwidth costs. To help prove this point even more, the ISP I am with now also gives 7Mbps speeds with no download limits per month and very rarely (only twice in the past several months and only for a total of about three hours) have they enacted any restrictions. What do they charge their customers? $20 a month. They have been in operation now for about five years and have continued to grow even while charging so little. If the claim is that an ISP who charges $40 a month cannot make money by putting together such obscene restrictions, then I would say they need to look through their financial structure and discover where the money is actually going.

ISPs pay for connectivity based on its capacity. Higher capacity costs more. The number of subscribers an ISP can support with a given connection capacity is a function of concurrent usage patterns. qed.

No large ISP provisions their network infrastructure to handle all subscribers consuming bandwidth at full throttle 24 x 7. Doing so would make no sense and cost too much, especially since the vast majority of users do not need that level of capacity. ISPs are starting to enforce limits and employ traffic shaping because a few users are consuming high amounts of bandwidth now, and they need to figure out how to deal with this issue before it gets out of hand. As I said above, they aren't doing a very good job yet.

To address Cillchaoi's implied question about my background: yes, I am a qualified networking engineer and have worked at the core technology development level since the mid 70's (since my EE doctoral studies); I have several networking-related patents and code I've written handles gigabits of traffic per day as I write this response. But....

My technical background is almost irrelevant to the topic at hand. It's just a matter of business. Complaining that a $40 connection doesn't let everyone download data at 7 Mbps 24 x 7 is ridiculous from a business perspective. You don't have to be a packet scientist...

Nor do you have to be a packet scientist to see that if $40 per month does not allow one to download at 7Mbps 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, yet $20 per month does, then there is something amiss with the argument that bandwidth is expensive. The local ISP that charges $20 has made it a policy to give everyone, I say again, everyone the full bandwidth for which they pay without limitation on usage save for the two times that I have mentioned. If the bandwidth were so expensive, then how could they afford to do so?

In this city, we have about 40,000 college students (undergraduate and graduate combined) in addition to the 60,000 permanent residents. This provider (who I keep nameless so as not to give away my location) has a large number of college students switching to them to download movies, music, and other media that eats bandwidth for lunch without any problems of bandwidth capacity. Further, several apartment complexes in the city have begun offering free accounts for this provider as part of the lease without any limitations on bandwidth usage (whether by speed or by amount per month).

I say again, your argument holds very little water in light of these facts. I have a hard time believing that this ISP is able to get bandwidth so cheap and no other ISP can. Also, look at the fact that in many other countries around the world, speeds are much higher (as much as 22Mbps or more in Europe, for example) and their monthly limits are not as obscenely low as this, yet the amount they pay is comparable to what is common here in the US.

There is something amiss with the broadband technology in the US if it is so expensive here in the US but not elsewhere in the world, even more so if it is only so expensive for some US ISPs but not others.

Your experience with the $20 ISP is not proof that they can profitably support 24 x 7 at 7 Mbps downloading for all their users. It just means that, so far, actual aggregate usage is within their capacity.

Do the math to figure out what it would cost to provision your 100k-user community with capacity to download 7 Mbps uncapped full time. That's 700 Gbps of burstable capacity. An OC-192 can only handle 10 Gbps/CKT. Even if your $20 ISP has only 30k subscribers they'd need 210 Gbps capacity. Their annual revenue would be $7.2M ($20x30000*12). It would take many years worth of revenue just to set up the infrastructure to handle 210 Gbps capacity, let alone pay for the operating bandwidth of the equivalent of 21 OC-192s. I pinged the head of operations at a major ISP for a cost estimate (just to make sure) and he said "This would require state of the art infrastructure and would probably cost hundreds of millions of dollars to set up". Even if he's off by a factor of 10 you can't do this on $7.2M/year.

This is why nobody actually offers the level of service you are talking about, and why we are seeing service providers starting to implement caps.

I've spent too much time on this thread at this point, and won't be posting any further replies.

Very good, dajomu, because it seems that the facts of this situation here reflect information that is very different than what you have stated yourself. This ISP is continuing to operate successfully and expand annually by reaching farther and farther into other communities for the same $20 for the same 7Mbps full-time bandwidth available to everyone (nearly) without limit. (Any other readers who happen to venture along here, see my messages above for the details about the occasional limit.) This goes to show that not only is it possible to get bandwidth quite easily and quite cheaply. Further, that backs up what I have found working as I have for other organizations, such as the corporate offices of State Farm where I was responsible for support of their entire WAN all across the US and Canada.

I say it again: there is no reason for there to be limits placed by ISPs. They only wish to make grand promises (offering high speeds) and collect the money but fail to deliver by using a loophole of "the speed says 'up to XMbps.'" That is like saying to someone, "you can use this car you have bought up to 24 hours a day" and then having the car for as little as only one hour each day. That is not what was paid for.

During one of my discussions with a problem expediter from Bell executive just in the last weeks I had specifically asked Bell Sympatico if they were using limits on their Internet services, and he lyingly had replied no.. I can see limits because it took an email 3 hours to reach me from within the same province, or cause I see the varying download speeds significantly dropping during certain time periods on P2P bandwidth.

I have detailed on the net in full my past dealing with Bell Sympatico at http://thenoncomformer.spaces.live.com/

RE: Unlimited LIE..... Smoke and mirrors
Posted 7:57 AM by Discussion Forum Administrator
Hi everyone,
To clarify some questions about the Internet traffic Management position by Bell.

Bell has a responsibility to maximize the ability for all customers to use and enjoy their Sympatico Internet service and a responsibility to deliver bandwidth fairly to its customers.

In order to fulfill these responsibilities, Bell is entitled under the terms of the Service Agreement, to utilize technology that maintains or enhances the performance of the Service and the integrity of its network.

Also, the Service Agreement and Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) prohibit the use of the Service in a way that impairs the operations or efficiency of the Service or creates an unusually large burden on our networks. To help ensure this does not happen during peak periods, Bell uses the latest, state-of-the-art technology to better balance Internet traffic and deliver fair use of the network to all of our customers.

We also continue to invest in the network to meet the growing demands of our customers. Like other ISPs, Bell is taking these steps to improve the on-line experience for its customers.

RE: Unlimited LIE..... Smoke and mirrors
Posted 8:58 AM by Dirty Harry
>>Bell has a responsibility to maximize the ability for all customers to use and enjoy their Sympatico Internet service and a responsibility to deliver bandwidth fairly to its customers.
and that was a nice self serving one sided interesting rather distorted picture you have painted about Bell Sympatico but it still has to be taken into context with

1 the existing undeniable fact many of the Bell customer's complaint here and before of your false denial of their promised Internet service, a violation of their contract agreement, specially including the fact that you had clearly already promised to many users to allow them unlimited download privileges..

2 Furthermore your stated distortion that you are treating everyone fairly is not true and not just in my own experiences, or many others, the persons who live closer to the central distribution hubs tend to get access to higher speeds in comparisons to those persons live further away such as in Vile Lasalle, Montreal quebec.. while they too are equally paying for a high speed Internet services they are not getting the same high speed..

3 On top of that alone does not deal with the much too often still Internet problems, denial of services, slow and sluggish Internet system even specially mine..

4: and the rudeness, lies given to me about this all given to me by Bell Sympatico.

Bell Sympatico support techs have already agreed with me on this many times in writing as well that this is unfair and have asked others in Bell Sympatico to fully deal with this many times.

What one hand promises the other hand takes away is still an unacceptable manner for Bell Sympatico still to do. This is false, misleading trade practices still.

On top of that Bell Sympatico they clearly have revealed even here their bad strategy, that they are willing to lose the 2 percent most active complainers business, so next they try to have them leave on their own too, or help them put of the door.. they think this approach is cheaper than spending money fixing the problems.. not realizing that the active complainers will affect negatively at least ten percent of other people as well... and on top of that others will also thus next find out how really bad these Bell Sympatico employees rather are as well and do something about it too.. I have already asked the federal government rightfully to do a full review of Bell Sympatico past, present business practices.. with copies to the news media, others.. it is after all still our right as well.

Like I have said too.. "CRTC doesn't regulate internet communication. We suggest that, as a first step, you contact your service provider directly. If you are not satisfied with the response of your service provider, you may wish to contact the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services (CCTS) since Bell is a member of the CCTS. The CCTS is an independent agency with a mandate to receive, to facilitate the resolution of, and, if necessary, resolve eligible consumer and small business complaints relating to certain retail telecommunications services. You can contact the CCTS: - by email: info@ccts-cprst.ca"
http://thenoncomformer.spaces.live.com/

http://www.supportcommunity.sympatico.ca/pe/action/forums/displaypost?postID=10139341

Now when is Bell Sympatico really going to rightfully get around to fixing their inadequate Internet services to me? http://thenoncomformer.spaces.live.com/

----- Original Message -----
From: the mailbag Paul kambulow
To: PM ; Prentice.J@parl.gc.ca ; Nicholson.R@parl.gc.ca ; Day.S@parl.gc.ca ; Dion, Stéphane - M.P.
Cc: comments@whitehouse.gov
Sent: Thursday, November 22, 2007 1:52 PM
Subject: Sacha Rollin executive assistanet Bell executive.office executive.office@bell.ca work (866) 701-0044.

Well Bell Sympatico really now cannot deny I have written to them about their really poor Internet services to me. You can also for now forward this whole letter, email to Sacha Rollin, executive assistant Bell executive.office, executive.office@bell.ca work , (866) 701-0044 even to Sympatico Assistance, assistance@sympatico.ca and tell them that if they do next want to take me further to the Queen's court on all of this, I gladly do request that all of my past letters be entered into the same court records, this one included, for these matters do need the full pubic disclosure, full publicity as well.

Many of my past complaints about Bell and the others they are already posted on the net. So Bell now does not like me writing to their colleagues about this still? so what. They Bell to obstruct justice, my witnessed truths about their lies, bad services from being further revealed, next threaten to discontinue my phone services with them too and not just my Internet services? Those Bell bullies do need to be exposed even further.. I will gladly do so.

I have my right of free speech and I can also write freely to any and all of the news media, elected representatives, Prime Minister, members of parliament. I already had informed me that Bell Sympatico was wrongfully falsely denying me access to write on their complaint site.

Bell does not like me to write the truth to them but they do not mind lying to me, abusing me.. and they Bell executive.office still have not returned any of my phone calls the last two weeks.. but they send me these useless replies in regard to my complaints.. and they have not services my net problems, nor have they even given me adequate replies to them.

The latest registered letter to me of November 21. 2-- 7 states " the present is sent in response to the numerous e-mails you have sent to the Bell executive office of Bell Canada Your numerous emails sent to Bell executive office constitute a form of harassment, you are formally notified to stop sending any emails to various leaders and/or members of the personnel of Bell Canada. Consequently all correspondences will have to be sent by mail to the undersigned".

Now what he wrongfully thinks he is another perverse dictator like our bad prime Conserbative Minister Stephen Harper who can order me around? Dream on, I do not work for them, I do not take their orders.. I can write to anyone I want about Bell too.

Paul Kambulow Bachelor of Civil Engineering 1968 Concordia University, Montreal

Copy to the honourable Stephen Dion Leader of the offcial opposition party. Dion.S@parl.gc.ca ;

Please do clearly clarify in detail for me what the President of Bell means when he writes and says today to me I cannot contact the various leaders by email about Bell and about what specific Bell issue? The latest registered letter sent to me at my home today November 21. 2007 states From Office of the president Bell- " the present is sent in response to the numerous e-mails you have sent to the Bell executive office of Bell Canada .. Your numerous emails sent to Bell executive office constitute a form of harassment, you are formally notified to stop sending any emails to various leaders and/or members of the personnel of Bell Canada. Persisting on this courase of action may result in the termination of our business realtionship and the inolment of our legal department. Consequently all correspondance realting to the present subject with exception a new problem will have to be sent to us by mail to the undersigned" Sacha Rollin,work (866) 701-004, executive assistant Bell executive.office, executive.office@bell.ca who has yet to return my phone call to him as well.

1: Does that mean I cannot even send you an email and why is that?
2: What I also cannot send an email about bad Bell to any of the news media, elected representatives??
3: or phone them about Bell without their permission? dream on.....
4: and what you do not want to have me CC Bell when I write about Bell to others too?
It is undeniably our Canadian Constitutional right to write a letter to any news media, to any elected representative and about any subject we want to

I can tell very shortly if a politician is perverse by the undeniable fact they do not even acknowledge my letters to them firstly. The Conservatives clearly are leaders in this field.. including those clearly immoral MPs Stockwell Day, Jim Prentice, R Nicholson even.. Prentice.J@parl.gc.ca ; Day.S@parl.gc.ca ; Nicholson.R@parl.gc.ca ; and so was the too often useless Liberal MP Paul Martin martin.paul@parl.gc.ca and I am still awaiting for them to even rightfully acknowledge my specific letters to them never mind properly act upon them next too. For the written leatters of mine about the bad RCMP, bad police, Bell Sympatico, Concordia University too. When I write I rarely get acknowledgments to my emails the last 25 years, except from the honourable US President George Bush and MP Stephen Don MP. The pretentious lying even New Conservatives want others to read, hear their messages but the way they still do treat letters written to them is unacceptably bad, appalling as the Mulroney affair has clearly indicated.. Free speech is a really big myth in Canada.. the problem with using your free speech is some supposedly offended party next will too often, lie, distort what you said, try to have you banned and your messages deleted. even especially if they are the negative truth about a government department, official, or about the cops, RCMP or a bad corporations. I too have experienced it many times in my life. Even the bad cops have come to my home now 6 times in the past to try to discourage me from writing to the news media and I am still decades later still writing to the news media. I even posted their false obstruction of justice, false intimidation of me next too for all to read, know and to act upon properly next as well. I rightfully no longer put up with unacceptable abuse quietly. You will find now also on many Internet sites, Bullies, loud crowing roosters who clearly do like to have all the posts, messages mainly with their name on it and they will next kick off the others. Even on the sites supposedly promoting Democracy and free speech in Alberta. There is a civil servant whistle blower who now is also suing the PM Stephen Harper apparently because he says his free speech was oppressed. And when they next come to my door by means of the police to harass me, I do put that on the net as well.. bad cops sent to my home by even the now ex Premier of Ontario Ernie Ewes included, for these snakes tend to hate being exposed by the light, they like to do their work in the dark, and public exposure in writing to all persons is what they mostly tend to be afraid of the most, and They next also find out the hard way that a good name was, is worth even more than all of the silver and gold they had lied, stolen to get now too.

Paul Kambulow Bachelor of Civil Engineering 1968 Concordia University Montreal

Intro : My problems with Bell Sympatico

As the Ontario law society had wrote back to me even twice now and said their lawyers are allowed to lie even to the Queen's courts judges to defend their clients, it is up to the judge to determine if the lawyer has lied or not, and most judges wrongfully never even bother to do so it seems.. this really sounds like the people working at Bell now too.

Well in response I admit I am worst than Valery Fabricant who had my job next at Concordia University andwho next shot and killed 4 of the related professors, happily one of my ex bad bosses now as well.

I am worse cause I use the pen and the pen is mightier than the sword, and it tarnishes rightfully a supposedly good name, for a tarnished name is not worth anything while a good name is worth a lot more than silver and God, and the bad guys next regret they had tacked with me next.

I have been now threatened with law suits the last 25 years for a President, Vice president as well.

All they did was threatened when I told them to go ahead they had more to lose by public exposure than I had.

An ex good friend of mine Walter, who himself became a bad guy next, had told me how to deal with my accusers, I suggests that they first remove rightfully the beam in their own eyes and then they next can help me with mine. When I had worked for Remax and next and next two separate professing Christians had asked me to go into partnerships wit them, Joan Wood and Charles Blackburn, and the partnership was quickly dissolved when I found out their definition of partnership meant splitting half of my sales, but none of theirs. This reminds me of many bad cabinet Ministers I have dealt with included justice and consumer affairs ministers my own member of parliament Paul Martin MP all those who had asked for us to support them to be elected but when in office they refused wrongfully to do anything good on my, our behalf generally next for the too were mostly self serving, one sided. I expose them as well next.

Paul Kambulow Bachelor of Civil Engineering 1968 Concordia University Montreal

Tired of Bell Sympatico and Throttling? Check this out, hilarious:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlMbxosLtaY