It’s no secret the CRTC has spent most of this year failing at this whole keeping the big 3 ISP’s in Canada at something vaguely resembling in line. They decided nearly two months ago that unlimitted internet didn’t actually exist, and kind of stuck to that until escentially told not to be–Shane’s take on how that ended up playing out is over here. Then, they decided it might be in their best interest to put the idea up for a review and get back to it in 60 days. I thought they might take advantage of the election to change their mind again, but before they could, Bell Canada–one of the big 3 who’re sitting comfortable behind usage-based billing (UBB) decided to get crafty.

Bell, in a submission to the CRTC yesterday, dropped its usage-based billing demands of the third-party ISP’s, one of which I’m currently a customer. Well, they sort of did. They replaced it with agrigated volume pricing (AVP), also known as UBB 2.0. Rather than charging ISP’s for what they’ve used after they’ve already used it, Bell is now looking at the possibility of having them purchase a certain amount of bandwidth from them, and god help them if they underestimate how much they’ll need. Yep, download cap 2.0, kids. Officially screwed? You betcha. And Netflix knows it. In direct response to the fact their Canadian branch is among those being targetted by these measures, Netflix Canada has officially lowered the quality of its video streaming service. Oh, yeah, and they kind of pointed out what I’ve been saying for at least the last month–the only ones benefitting from it are the big 3. Oh and, guess what? Here’s the kicker–Bell’s customers still get the pleasure of dealing with UBB while they slap us in the face with AVP. Forget officially screwed. We’re heading straight down the road to officially ripped the hell off.

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I’m not one for capped internet connections. Never have been. Not even if I’m only checking email. I took full advantage of one ISP on my way out for reasons of capped bandwidth/traffick shaping policies–that they’re still continuing with, last I’d heard. I ripped into another for offering its own customers an on-demand streaming service a la Netflix and deciding hey, our internet customers don’t actually need a reason to use our service over torrents, so we’ll just count it against their bandwidth cap. I went at them again, this time for lowering their already ridiculously low caps in response to the launch of the offending Netflix in Canada. At the time, while none of the big 3 ISP’s (Rogers, Bell and Telus) were offering unlimitted internet services, the smaller ISP’s TekSavvy, Primus) were. And life was great. I ditched Bell for TekSavvy, who I ended up leaving for other reasons over 2 and a half years later–but that’s been beaten to death over here already, and avoided both issues. Bell decided not long after that that they didn’t much like us playing that game. So they wined to the CRTC. As did Rogers, as did Telus. Because, you know, competitive advantage in Canada just shouldn’t be allowed to exist. This past week, the CRTC agreed. Now, as of February first, even the smaller ISP’s are mandated to piss off their customers by charging them for any and all usage that takes you beyond 25 GB. After 25 GB, your options are to pay $x for every gig over that amount, or pay another price–usually only slightly less–for blocks of bandwidth, some companies (hello, TekSavvy) are calling it insurance, that you may or may not actually end up using for a month–more than likely, you’ll end up using.

As a general guide, let me let you in on a little hint as to just how ridiculously tiny 25 GB is. If you’re into the whole online gaming thing, even if it’s just one of those games you find on Facebook to kill half an hour on your coffee break, you can blow through 25 gigs easily in a month. If you’re doing anything more demanding than that, for example playing World of Warcraft, even if it’s not for very long at a stretch, 25 gigs goes by pretty quick. Get a lot of email? Use a fair bit of Twitter? Decide you want to install your favourite OS on a spare computer? Or virtually? Do pretty much anything that isn’t your typical half-hour of internet usage a day for checking email/paying bills? Your 25 gig cap waves goodbye in an aweful goddamn hurry. Yep, you guessed it. Youtube, streaming music, random TWAudio or Q-audio things, they hurt too. And don’t even get me started on what any even moderate amount of file sharing of any kind, legal or otherwise, does to the bandwidth cap–which would be the entire reason for the cap in the first place.

The major players in the Canadian market have been calling the shots pretty much since the advent of the CRTC and the granting of regulatory authority to the CRTC over our portion of the internet. Bell, Rogers, Telus all started throttling traffick, manipulating things in such a way that traffick that fell into specific categories was slowed or otherwise given headaches–we call that throttling, or traffick shaping. The big push from the smaller ISP’s at that time was “we’d never do that to you!”. And, ironically, they were right–they usually never did. So shortly before I officially was to switch ISP’s from Bell to Teksavvy, Bell thought they’d extend a favour to the smaller ISP’s, and do the traffick shaping for them. Nice, no? Naturally, the CRTC was perfectly fine with it–prompting at least two complaints and a petition that didn’t actually end up getting a whole lot of anywhere. And voila, one third-party throttle, served monopolistically. It’s been that way escentially since. Same with the newest issue of usage-based billing.

Bell and Rogers began instituting, and later lowering–hence those first few links at the top of the entry–bandwidth caps. They started out mildly reasonable and didn’t hang around there long. Instead, prices went up, bandwidth went down, and–at least on DSL–speeds escentially stayed the same. Suddenly, we weren’t getting what we’d call our money’s worth. Once again, up comes the smaller ISP, this time with an unlimitted bandwidth offering and a promise of “We wouldn’t do that to you!”. And, once again, they’re usually right–they, specifically, wouldn’t do that to their customers. And once again, Bell, Rogers and Telus, who the smaller ISP’s have little to no choice but deal with if they want to be able to offer internet service, volunteered to do them the favour of instituting bandwidth caps for them. And once again, they did it with the complete backing of the CRTC–poof, usage-based billing is born, the unlimitted internet is dead. As before, there’s a mass amount of appeals underway to try and convince the CRTC to see reason, but so far, it hasn’t done much but take up space in the news. And once again, the CRTC is stuck in 1995 or 2000, in the land of the barely above 56k. And just like that, like the land of barely above 56k, the CRTC snaps its fingers and unlimitted internet no longer exists. Now if we could just see *improvements* to our internet services come through as quickly as hinderences. Well, can’t have everything. At least someone’s seeing some quick progress.

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I came back to the parents’ place for the week, and to a computer who’s video card is still pretty well toast. They lack the financial room to get a new one, so in place of that, dad’s leaving his laptop here for the week. That meant setting it up so mom could check her email. Not too difficult for someone like me, you’d think, but Bell has decided to break email.

To start, they use Hotmail to manage customers’ mail, which kind of presents it’s own crazy fun times. When they set it up, though, they took fail to a new level. I’m not exactly technically challenged, and I still had to work my head around the brokenness. If they were setting it up themselves, the booze supply would be a whole crap ton lower. Short and simple: I despise Bell. I despise Hotmail. And right now, I wouldn’t mind taking a clue to both. Now where’s that booze?

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I should probably stop being surprised by stuff like this. And I probably will, just not today. I was getting ready to leave yesterday morning, and take Jessica back to Ottawa so she could get back home to that job she loves so much, and also formulating in my head the content of that update I actually have yet to put on paper–or, at least, online. We were due to leave at about 11:30 yesterday morning. At about 20 after 11, I get a phone call from Bell Canada, who I sadly have yet to fully ditch after losing their internet service over two years ago. It’s from their accounts receiveable department. Strange, I think, since the bill isn’t actually due for another few days–and besides, didn’t they already suck out their alotted portion of my soul for this month? Still, we’re already kind of getting into a time crunch, what with making sure Jess has everything ready so we can just grab her stuff and fly. So, knowing we have to leave, knowing they’re closed today, knowing they’ll be closed by the time I get back from Ottawa–turns out, they closed about 2 hours before I got back from Ottawa, I perhaps slightly less diplomatically than I should, tell them I’ll deal with it on Monday. I’d just add it to the list of about a dozen other phone calls I have to make then. Closed ’til Monday, right? Well, er, not really.

We do the Ottawa run, drop in to see folks before ducking out, get back here at 7. Jess is due into Toronto any time now, so I hang out for a bit then decide to call her, make sure the drop kicking of personnel isn’t required so soon into her trip. Pick up the landline, no dial tone. Weird again, I think–it worked well enough that morning for Bell to call me, and our ride to Ottawa to call me after that to say they’re here. Figure it’s just a temporary glitch type thing–the lines here sometimes will do that, for no apparent reason other than somebody thinks it’s fun to not fix things like that. So a few minutes later, I try again, same result. Well, okay, screw this. Grab the cell phone, dial my home number. Number’s not in service. Okay, now this is getting slightly irritating. So I call up Bell’s tech support via my cell phone, which routes me to accounts receiveable–who just so happens to be closed, call back on Monday. So now, as it stands, before I make any of the multiple calls that need to be made tomorrow, I first need to line up and jump down Bell Canada’s throat. Again. This is almost getting to be routine.

Bell. I paid you. Probably more than I should, considering the current state of my bank account. Kindly give me back my phone service so I may make significantly more progress in being gainfully employed, so I can come up with more money with which to pay you until such time as I can work ditching you completely into my plans. And then promptly shove your overeager bill collectors through the nearest doorway to hell. That’d be all kinds of appreciated.

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And they’ve announced it without biting one another’s heads off. have I stepped into an alternate universe? Apparently, they’re both in the starter stages of trying out LTE on their cell networks. For serious. LTE, also known as Long Term Evolution, in Canada? Potentially 100 mbit/sec download speeds–on your freaking cell phone? And just when I actually sort of almost got caught up with current tech trends. Oh, and hey look, we’re actually playing around with something the US hasn’t already had for 5-10 years–Verizon’s only just now rolling theirs out. Yeah, this must be one of those alternate universe things. Now let’s see if in a year I can actually use any of the phones that are supposed to run on this network. But hey, the prospect is kind of halfway to nifty. I think I’ll hang onto that.

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I promise, there’s an actual update about, well, me coming eventually. But in the meantime, have a techy rant.

I’ve never really been an overly huge fan of Bell Canada. Usually, I’d default to them only because the alternative–which, at the time, was Rogers–isn’t exactly a whole lot better. I’d heard halfway good things about some of the smaller ISP’s, but couldn’t be bothered to switch–most noteably because they still escentially sold their services over Bell’s equipment. Then they started throttling their customers for doing anything they didn’t agree with–like, for example, downloading a season of a TV show via torrent. Then, because the kicker for the smaller ISP’s was they could start advertising they didn’t do that, Bell decided shortly thereafter to start throttling the smaller ISP’s in much the same way. Meanwhile while this was going on, they were inventing new and creative ways to try and screw me over entirely.

In May of 2008, shortly after word came out about Bell’s throttling of third party ISP’s, I switched my internet service to TekSavvy. While yeah, they’re still borrowing Bell’s services for their own uses, at least my money wasn’t going directly into their pockets this time. And I ended up paying less of it overall. Apparently, Bell’s decided users from third party ISP’s should be paying through the nose for their services, much like they would be through Bell directly. So they’ve opted to introduce a rather ridiculous overage fee on a per-byte basis to the third party ISP’s. It amounts to, according to the linked article, roughly $1.13/gigabyte. And naturally, it has CRTC approval, so prices will probably start going up even while the appeals by the affected ISP’s are being drafted. Way to go, Bell. If we had a third option, you’d get none of my money entirely. Sadly, I’m still not entirely enthusiastic about the alternatives.

And, of course, while I was writing this post, a friendly neighbourhood nag agent from Bell itself thought it might be fun to call me up on a Saturday afternoon and inform me my apparent new phone bill is now approximately $11 higher than it should be for same service. Once again, Bell’s got the wrong idea here. Here’s a random thought. You already lost me on your internet service–largely because your internet service, and the folks who support it, fail–contrary to the regular junkmail I’m still seeing in my mailbox encouraging me to reconsider. Are you trying to lose me on your phone service, too? You’re succeeding, if you are.

Update: And now I read Bell’s doing exactly the same thing to its direct customers. So much for unlimitted plans.

The CRTC noted almost all the individuals who voiced their opinions were “unanimously opposed” to Bell’s application.

And yet, the application was approved anyway. Officially screwed, again.

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By this time next month, new phone service will be asigned to numbers in a new, much talked about area code–that being 343. It’s supposed to go into effect as of the 17th of next month. In slightly unrelated news, my old 613 number still has up a recording telling folks I’ve moved, and my number has accordingly been changed. Keep in mind I moved in October of 2009. Does this mean phone companies aren’t reusing old numbers, but are rather kind of letting them hang out in limbo for the sake of it? I wonder if this means I can request my old number when I move back to Ottawa, assuming I’m not too poor to aford a telephone by then. That’d make my life about a hundred times easier, what with most of the services I’ve long since stopped using on account of having moved still having that old number. Which, more than likely, is precisely why it probably wouldn’t happen that way. Ah well. People call enough of my formerly current phone numbers they’ll eventually get the new current one. Maybe. You’d think that’d cost the phone company more, though. No wonder my bill seems to have gone up a bit…

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Every second or third day, now that I’m watching more on TV lately–hey, the olympics are on–I’ve been seeing ads from both Bell and Rogers, both saying their internet’s the fastest for doing blah blah blah because of blah blah blah. I’ve used Bell’s Sympatico high-speed service. Have not, admittedly, used Rogers’s offering–but if it’s as broken as their other network, that might be a good thing. Still, at least one of those advertisements is lying. Most likely both.

I have a solution. Let me test, at their best, both network technologies–Bell’s, and Rogers’s. Provide me 30 days of each to switch back and forth between, and we’ll figure out which is actually faster, if any. If neither is, then you can both shut up about it. That has the added benefit of getting Rogers service into Pembroke, where it currently has no cable coverage–in spite of the fact we see plenty of advertising from them. If that offer doesn’t work, then neither company has the right to defend their claims in any kind of battle, court or otherwise. I dunno, I think that’s pretty damn fair.

And hey, if DreamHost will let me, maybe I can see about taking care of their issues while I’m at it. Couldn’t hurt to suggest it, anyway.

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Mister Bell technician finally showed up. Took him all of half an hour to 40 minutes to do his thing. And 2/3 of that was him trying to find where my phone line connects downstairs. I swear this guy’d been doing his job for maybe a week. And now, the phone line works, and I have net access again (I was without it while he was tinkering). Now I just have to make a certain phone call to a certain someone at a certain time so she’s not thinking I’m abandoning/ignoring her. Or something. Or just because we didn’t get to talk much yesterday. And now, I go do that.

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Is this going to be a quarterly affair now? For the third (fourth, maybe?) time this year, I’m landline-less. I didn’t even bother with Bell’s tech support this time; they’d just make me do the same damn thing I did 6 times before calling in. Instead, I decided to pull my hair out trying to navigate their automated system. Eh, it’s still so much easier than speaking to some dood from India. So after jumping through the requisit computerized hoops (you’d think, having worked for a computer company, I’d be used to that), a technician will be out here tomorrow. between… the hours of 8:00 AM and 5:00 PM. Well damn. Good thing I’m unemployed. They sure aren’t being all that work schedule friendly. And of all the reasons I can think of where I’d love to just call in sick, waiting for a Bell Canada technician to show up is so not one of them.

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I just got off the phone with one of those internet usage survey things. They had questions about Bell/Sympatico. My answers were, quite understandably, less than glowing. I’m a very bad person to be taking a survey for statistics purposes, methinks.

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Phone service should be restored eventually. Hopefully tonight. Can someone with my home number call me if they’re home before 5:30 and lemme know if it goes to voicemail? … Or, at least, doesn’t say I’ve been disconnected?

Edit: Thanks to people who called me. It does indeed work. Now I just need to complete the task of utterly owning Bell.

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Well, technically. See last Friday’s post about it not actually *being* friday until 5:30, when I walk outa this place for 2 days of absolutely awesome relax me time. I have no fucking clue what it is I’m doing this weekend, but I do know it’s going to involve way cool people, and probably at least one phone call. I say at least one because, well, I can.

Speaking of phone calls, Bell’s apparently not done screwing with me yet. I get home last night to find that everyone’s favourite phone company has murderized my phone service. Why? Because apparently, even though I paid ‘em on Tuesday, they decided they weren’t paid yet. So part of my lunch hour will involve giving them my third? … fourth? earful this year so far. Fun fun. Thankfully I do still have cell service (if anyone who needs to get a hold of me doesn’t have my number and should, let me know; I tend to be ridiculously bad at keeping track of who has what sometimes.), so at least I’m not all manner of cut off. And I’ve still got intarwebz, so I can still catch up with people. I’d just like my landline back plz, kthx. Ah well, can’t win ‘em all. There will be nuclear bullshit a-flying. somebody at the phone company of dooom will accidentally end up in its path. And I will watch with innocent amusement. Or something.

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Because I’ve got a grand total of 10 minutes.

• It may just be me, and the fact my tolerence for pain of various types being insanely high, but the suicide wings from Local Heroes didn’t really have a whole lot to them. Not that the people from work I went with would agree with me.
• I’ve discovered why it is my two microphones don’t like this computer. There’s an issue somewhere between sound card and OS. I suspect strongly the sound card is to blame. Dell will be receiving a phone call.
• Dell *did* receive a phone call earlier, but now Bell Canada has graduated from randomly kicking me off the internets to apparently randomly disconnecting me during phone calls, and not allowing me to call out for extended periods. And since I only had half an hour to twist a technician’s arm into replacing my sound card, I shall have to take another crack at it tonight. Technology sucks.
• It’s the middle of freaking May. And we’re getting a potential frost warning. I see a problem here. Do you?

And now, I go to work. This batch of randomness brought to you by too goddamn early.

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Sadly, Canadian citizens only. But interested Canadian citizens can certainly voice their opinion. cut, because it’s an essay and doesn’t apply to everyone.

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In order to address my issues with not being able to keep a stable connection to Bell’s ever so craptastical intarwebz, they have graciously lowered my maximum connection speed in an attempt to stabilize things. Roughly translated: Don’t ask me to download anything for you until I switch ISPs. Now it’s officially at a crawl. How that does for the connection’s anyone’s guess. But gee, at least Bell’s looking out for its customers. Oh, and, did I mention I’m cancelling my service with them for a flakey connection among other things? Yes, I do believe I did, once or twice. It’s 12:30. I should probably consider sleeping. Instead, I’m gonna go play knock the Indian tech support around for an hour or so. Anyone wanna watch?

Edit: Didn’t even take half that, and I managed to blow right by a tech support moron and a supervisor. Now tomorrow I’ll call someone who can actually afford to buy a clue.

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Shortly after cancelling my Sympatico account, I considered how best to take full advantage of the fact Bell will, as of the 27th of this month, no longer be able to directly screw me over. And I’ve decided, I can only do so by beating them to the punch, and promptly screwing them over. So, this morning (that would be on the 5th, naturally, as I’ve not yet learned to start that whole sleeping thing before midnight), I promptly deleted every TV show, movie, trailer, whatnot I have ever downloaded on this connection; approximately a year’s worth of material. And kept the torrents around. You can probably see where this is going. I’m now going to see exactly how long it takes me to download every single one of them again. Because I’m just that awesome. I figure, I have exactly 3 weeks from today/tomorrow, depending on your perspective, to waste 60 GB of bandwidth before they officially cancel me and I can switch over to TekSavvy. I think I can download most of it by then. And for the record, I’ve got a 500 GB hard drive. It was more than 3/4 full. You do the math. I’m too busy being highly amused.

PS: Fuck you, Bell.

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I’ll randomly post articles from technology related sites on here at times, mostly to point out the utter moronicness of the situations in question. Techdirt gets nominated as my source for local stupidity. Snipped for length.

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The biggest monopoly on Canadian telephone and DSL service is apparently set to become the biggest US owned Canadian monopoly. Thanks largely to a ruling courtesy a Quebec judge. There are no words for this. Except, that is, a thank you. You see, I didn’t think the government could sell us out to the US all on its own. Thanks for the help, moron.

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It redefines ridiculous, and actually makes me resent mother nature more than any of my top 3 favourite entities to hate on, but according to Bell technician dood who’s name I never got, squirrels broke my phone service, the ratbastards. Which… I suppose explains why even a replaced phone line didn’t last more than 24 hours. What I wouldn’t mind knowing though, is why it took 2 technicians coming out here to figure that out. Apparently, according to the smarter one of the 2, they were nesting on one of the telephone poles outside the building. Which… kinda makes me contemplate agreeing with those of the persuasion that they should be shot. But, now, I have working phone service again. I’m no less irritated with Bell, mind you, but now it’s for a whole different reason–that I had to take a day off work to actually have it looked at a second time, since the first one was apparently an idiot. Ah well, if the world didn’t have it’s fair share of stupid people, I’d have nothing to talk about. I just wish I didn’t have to deal with them.

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I was hoping I wouldn’t have to take the day off to actually have this delt with, but apparently, someone over at Bell needs to be called back, blasted, and then properly instructed on how best to fix my freakin’ phone line so it actually works for more than an afternoon. Apparently, it’s not about to fix itself, however. And I’m not waiting until Monday to have it looked at a second time. The call gets made, tonight. And it’ll be pretty one-sided. In the meantime… I’ve received possible alternatives to mother Bell. They will be investigated.

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For the third time this month, and the second time in 2 days, I presently have no home telephone line. Which, for whatever reason, has no effect whatsoever on my DSL service. My overall pissedness with the ISP side of my phone company is already well documented, but I’ve yet to actually make mention to the problems I have with the phone company side of it. Which makes sense, really–until this month, I’ve had none. But, as it stands right now, I currently have no dial tone. I’ve had no dial tone since I’m not sure when this morning. I had no dial tone until the technician showed up yesterday at about noonish to replace the phone line. We know it’s a problem with the actual building. Meaning, the line going from building to main box a couple streets over. Which means at least it didn’t cost me anything to replace it. However, it *should* also mean that once the technician replaced it, it should be fixed. Not so much. Granted, it worked yesterday afternoon. And last night, until I’m not sure when. But she no worky now. And it’s not sitting well with me. fortunately, after outage number 1 I got smart and had my home phone number forwarded to my cell, so at least now any incoming calls I should be expecting won’t be missed. But I purchased home phone service through these fools for two reasons. It makes teh interwebs cheaper, and I still need to call folks long distance. Not doing that on my cell, thankyaverymuch. So now I’m paying for a phone line I’m only using for internets, and a long distance service I can’t use until the internets people start doing their phone company job, too. And all of this comes wrapped in a neat little what the fuck package. Tempted am I to ditch Bell/Sympatico entirely. Except I’m not a big fan of VOIP, and the only real alternative to them for the internet is Rogers. Um, can we say no thank you please? Suggestions are welcome. If the 1.25 of you who actually read this thing have any. Until then, mother Bell can kiss my ass.

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