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CRTC Releases Net Neutrality Complaints Data

The CRTC yesterday released new net neutrality complaints data. The data shows a significant increase in the number of complaints in the last quarter of 2011 when compared with the prior two years. I wrote about the complaints issue in July 2011 based on data obtained under the Access to Information Act.

One Comment

  1. Far from neutral
    Don’t get me started…

    Discrimination against residential vs business users:
    … only business subscribers get the privilege of unblocked ports and a usage policy that allows running servers such as those for personal websites or email.

    … and the business plans are the only way to get a static IP addresses, suitable for a DNS name to point to, even though it would cost nothing to provide the option (either a checkbox or 1 line of text).

    Discrimination against uploaders:
    … asymmetric download vs upload speeds, meaning you can only hope to be a consumer and putting the monopolies at an advantage since my download speeds are only as fast as my source’s upload speeds; my ISP will always be the fastest service, so why look elsewhere for my news? At minimum, I’ll stick to the “big” brand-name sites. They know best anyway…

    Of course, there are standard arguments for these, like:
    … “only businesses need to run mailservers, so why shouldn’t we block the ports that hackers and spammers use?”

    … and, only business need static addresses, so why shouldn’t we charge for the 1-line static DHCP mapping?

    … and, people download more than they upload, so why shouldn’t downloading be faster?

    These are all red-herrings to distract from the traffic discrimination and abuse of their monopoly positions to lock would-be competition up before it even gets started, and to prevent customers from communicating.

    The Internet was designed as a peer-based network that just carried bytes. Everyone was equal… For a couple of years, before people started accepting gradual compromises.

    Now you need a business plan to set up a website, so most entrepreneurs pay Rackspace or Amazon. (It wasn’t always like this.)

    Now you need a business plan to host your own email at a fixed address, so most people and even technically-savy people opt to put their privacy at risk and use web-based providers. (It wasn’t always like this.)

    The Internet is broken. It’s time for the CRTC to step up on neutrality. The Internet isn’t just a cable network.

    IPv6 solves some of these problems by allowing your whole home network to be on the “real” Internet again (not just behind a router; but you can hide them too, if you like the privacy), and you can have a fixed address if you like. This would do away with the need for business-tier plans (at least until they break it again…).

    Of course, none of the main ISPs are jumping at IPv6 because the “do nothing” alternative will lead to a highly-centralized and deeply-nested walled-in network that is closer to the broadcast model they like best.

    If they get what they want, we might even have a premium “pay per page” service to look forward to. Sounds fun.

    There was only supposed to be one Internet. That was the whole point…