Monthly Archives: March 2008

Canada’s Net Neutrality Fight Begins

Michael Geist (via Steven) recently revealed that Bell Canada has been secretly throttling the wholesale bandwidth it sells to small ISPs. These small companies are supposed to be Bell’s competitors, but with their service limited, they are essentially playing by Bell’s rules. A map of reported slowdowns is being updated.

Now Bell is admitting that it limits all encrypted or P2P traffic in the afternoon and evening. Not only illegal P2P content will be slowed down, but legitimate access to secure sites and even CBC’s Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister, or VPN remote access to an office after hours “will simply not work as fast” according to a spokesperson.

Meanwhile, US internet service provider Comcast has been legally obliged to stop throttling their customers. It’s Canada’s hour to step up and fight for the right to fair competition in our telecom industry, and fair access to the means of communication.

The NDP’s Charlie Angus has issued a statement calling on Industry Minister Jim Prentice to establish clear rules to limit interference by big companies like Bell. I’ll be writing to my MP about this – or you can file a complaint with the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services if your ISP is being throttled.

The terror of almost done

I am not writing here because: I am almost done a full thesis draft.

There is a terror in almost being done with a big piece of writing: because when we bring it into the world, it stands or falls on its own value. In my mind, my writing is perfect, complete, lucid. In fact, it is lumpen, awkward, sometimes unrefined.

The Open-source Boyfriend says, “you have to communicate it, and to communicate it you have to write it down. You can’t have someone halfway across the world read what you write and comment on it until it’s written.”

I know he’s right (write?). Release early, release often, they say. But I’m scared that the awful truth is that upon release, I have nothing to say!