It looks like Bell and other Canadian ISP companiea are letting the country down internationally with their poor management practices.
http://www.p2pnet.net/story/15989An OECD official has singled out Canada’s ongoing ISP traffic shaping scandal for special mention in a report on the country’s eroding position as a “global broadband internet leader”.“Officials at Bell and Rogers Communications Inc., Canada’s two largest ISPs, declined to comment.”
The above is the tail end to a CBC article saying currently, Denmark leads OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries with 35.1 subscribers per 100 inhabitants, followed by the Netherlands at 34.8 and Iceland at 32.2, it says.
The traffic shaping / network neutrality controversy, “is precisely because competitive operators haven’t installed their own equipment in exchanges and rely on wholesale offers from Bell Canada,” Reynolds says.
Smaller ISPs say they’ve invested in their own equipment but Bell has, “sidestepped the unbundling rule by shifting its internet connections out of central buildings and into streetside cabinets, which are exempt from regulation,” the report says, according to CBC, which has CAIP (Canadian Association of Internet Providers) pointing out Bell has, “shifted the majority of its connections in urban areas to these cabinets, a charge Bell disputes”
It does seem unfortunate that by acting in such a high-handed way canadian ISP companies are making Canada look bad internationally in terms of future investment, after all who would really want to base their high tech company in a land where you cannot even be sure of obtaining a reasonable service from the internet company you inked a contract with.
