Canada: Operators Directed to Stop Zero-Rate Video

While zero-rated data gains popularity in some markets (Colombia, Pakistan, Zambia), the Canadian regulator, CRTC, directed two MNOs, Bell Mobility and Videotron to eliminate this "unlawful practice", which they categorize as "application-specific economic Internet Traffic Management Practice (ITMP)".

CRTC announced that "As Canadians turn more and more to the Internet for viewing content, it is important to make sure that these new platforms are made available to Canadians in a fair and open manner. In this regard, the CRTC issued a decision today that reinforces its commitment to an open Internet. 

The CRTC has directed Bell Mobility and Vidéotron to stop giving their mobile television services, Bell Mobile TV and illico.tv, an unfair advantage in the marketplace, to the disadvantage of other Internet content. These companies exempted their own mobile television services from their standard monthly data charges. Content from other websites or apps, on the other hand, counted against the customer’s data cap.

• Bell Mobility must eliminate this unlawful practice by April 29, 2015.
   
• For its part, Vidéotron indicated that it planned to withdraw its illico.tv app for BlackBerry and Android devices by the end 2014. Vidéotron must confirm by March 31, 2015 that this app has been withdrawn and ensure that any new mobile TV service it offers does not give it an unfair preference or advantage over similar services.

See "CRTC continues to set the course for the future of television with Let's Talk TV decisions" - here and a detailed discussion "Broadcasting and Telecom Decision CRTC 2015-26" - here.  

Rogers Stops DPI/Traffic Management; Cisco: "there have been very few cases of misclassification"

 
For several months now, Rogers is facing resistance against its traffic management policy enforcement, as it misclassifies some non P2P file sharing traffic as such. This comes from interested parties (Canadian Gamers - here) and, more importantly, Canada's regulator, the CRTC (see "CRTC to Rogers: We Know what you are doing ..!" - here and "CRTC to Rogers: Fix your DPI System!" -here).

It turns out the Rogers decided to give up on traffic management enforcement (this follows a similar step by Bell Canada - here). So either the problem is too complicated for Cisco to solve, or there is no longer a business justification to manage P2P file sharing traffic.

In his letter to the CRTC, Kenneth G. Engelhart, SVP Regulatory (here), says that:  

• First, it should be noted that very little traffic is affected by the traffic management of unidentified traffic on peer-to-peer file sharing ports. Rogers has conducted a test of real world traffic and determined that only .005% of real world traffic falls into this category. In other words, 5 one thousandths of 1% of real world traffic is not classified by the Cisco software and is on peer-to-peer file sharing ports
   
• Nonetheless, out of an abundance of caution and to allay any concerns which the Commission’s investigation may have created, we have reconfigured the Cisco equipment so that the unclassified traffic on peer-to-peer ports is no longer traffic managed.
   
• In addition, we have been reviewing our traffic shaping policy for several months. New technologies and ongoing investments in network capacity will allow Rogers to begin phasing out that policy starting in March 2012. These changes will be introduced to half of Rogers existing Internet customers by June 2012 and to its remaining customers by December 2012.

Rogers added a letter signed by Larry Chang (pictured), VP engineering Technology, ERBU stating that "there have been very few cases where traffic has been misclassified as peer-to-peer file sharing traffic". 

2012 - Usage Based Billing Starts for US DSL Services

 

End of year is the time for either predictions (which I disregard as they usually made by vendors and say that the products they sell will be the hottest trend next year; extreme example - here) or summarizing the year. 

For the latter,  a story by  Sean Buckley to FierceTelecom provides the current status of Usage based Billing in North America DSL services.

Unless we will see last minute changes, AT&T, Frontier and CenturyLink will introduced UBB for "2% of their customers using a disproportionate amount of bandwidth .. will get a 150 GB allowance, while U-verse subscribers have a 250 GB cap on services .. Any subscriber that exceeds the new usage cap three times over the life of their account will be charged $10 for every 50GB over the 150 GB or 250GB limit. (AT&T case). Verizon and  Sonic.net are not going to charge overage fees.  

During the year I followed the case of Bell Canada (see "Canada: Final(?) Decision - No UBB for Bell Canada Wholesale Service" - here) in which, during the year long saga, led Netflix to offer optimized streaming video flow that will reduce volume by 66% (here).

To understand the effect of UBB we can learn from an experiment in New Zealand, in which TelstraClear removed data caps for one weekend. The result - "Customers used two and a half times more data overall than the previous weekend" (here and chart).

On the other hand we also saw a research claiming that "Data caps are a very Unfair Tool when Targeting Disruptive Users" - here.
 

See "Year in review 2011: Usage Based Billing (UBB) will punish all broadband users" - here.

Game is not Over: Canadian Gamers vs. Rogers' DPI

  

The debate in Canada over Rogers' traffic management and DPI problems is not resolved yet. Although Rogers admitted to have  issues with its classification and policy enforcement actions in March (here) and was ordered by the regulator, CRTC, to fix it (here), the Canadian Gamers Organization (CGO) is not happy yet. 

Several quotes from the letter sent by CGO to the CRTC last week, related to the classification and rate-limiting policies, are shown below (see the full text here).

All-in-all, it shows the complexity of implementing a scalable policy enforcement structure, that will allow the ISP to implement its commercial goals, to millions of users with combination of policies controlling "real-time (VoIP, gaming)", "jitter sensitive (streaming video)", "normal" and "bandwidth hogs" applications. 

  

Until this is done correctly, it will be very difficult to market premium "QoE based tiered services".  Nevertheless, referring to yesterday's post on standalone vs. embedded DPI solutions (here) - it seems that standalone products are much closer to implement this strategy.

• .. Yet it is apparent from Rogers’ letter of September 2 that other applications and games are being misclassified by its ITMP and pushed into this rate limiting channel... Rogers states openly in its September 2 letter that World of Warcraft and unspecified “other games” are diverted to this rate-limited channel by its DPI. This would be consistent with reports the CGO has received recently from our members. It means anything running above 80/kbps with file sharing applications running is being actively impacted and misclassified by Rogers ITMP
   
• Even if games or other applications ran below the 80/kbps threshold individually; if they were running simultaneously that combines upload traffic to exceed 80/kbps with P2P applications running, they would also be impacted by Rogers ITMP from what Rogers has disclosed to the commission.  Rogers’ ITMP is activated “for traffic at 80 kbps and above”, and through Rogers disclosure is only active when P2P file sharing applications are open. As the commission well knows, Canadian consumers can have several gaming systems, wireless devices, and PCs hooked up simultaneously in any given home network set up.
   
• Further, CGO wishes to submit that not all games run below 80/kbps.  World of Warcraft is an older game, and since development and release of this game, newer games are increasingly becoming more sophisticated requiring much more bandwidth. World of Warcraft recently updated to provide a setting to users which would make the game server respond faster to user actions, but at the cost of the user's upstream bandwidth increasing.  World of Warcraft also has a built-in VOIP for in-game team chat on top of regular game data transmitted to developer’s servers and to other peers on the network, however the bulk of World of Warcraft users prefer to use alternate VOIP solutions (due to better sound quality/voices being much clearer), which can be additionally taxing on the upstream bandwidth.
    
• The developers of the game Homefront,  for example, state it requires users to have consistent upload traffic between 100 - 120/kbps in order for the game to run smoothly with a direct connection to their servers, stating that most lower end DSL connections in the US support upload of 768/kbps. 

 

CRTC to Rogers: Fix your DPI System!

   

6 months ago, Rogers admitted that its "traffic management equipment that can interfere with World of Warcraft .. We have determined that the problem occurs only when our customers are simultaneously using peer-to-peer file sharing applications and running the game"  - see "Rogers [Canada] Admits its P2P Traffic Management Impacts Interactive Gaming" - here.
 

      

Now, the CRTC has instructed Rogers to fix the problem. In a letter that was sent on Friday to Rogers,  (here, from DSPreports.com), John Traversy, Executive Director, Telecommunications says: "Commission staff notes that in its report entitled World of Warcraft Testing, dated 25 July 2011, Rogers indicated that it had implemented a “whitelisting” solution to resolve issues related to misclassification of this specific game. Based on information provided by Rogers’ 2 September 2011 letter, as noted above, Commission staff considers that Rogers’ ITMPs could potentially continue to misclassify time-sensitive traffic such as other online games and therefore this could be affecting those games. Commission staff considers that Rogers should address and resolve this misclassification problem As a result, Commission staff requests that Rogers file a plan for resolving the possibility of misclassification of other interactive game traffic, by 27 September 2011, that includes specific steps and timelines for each step". 

Easy to Use Cloud Backup Maybe Expensive!

  

A new class of applications may be added to the list of "bandwidth hungry applications", in addition to usual suspects - P2P file sharing and video streaming. The story below shows how cloud based backup services may also consume enormous amounts of bandwidth. DPI vendors - please take care! 

A month ago I covered an article by Mathew Ingram (picture) to Gigaom, describing how he tried to locate what was consuming hundreds of Gigabytes per month on his Rogers home service (see "Every [Canadian] Family Needs a CIO" - here).

Now, Mathew published the sequel - this time with the exact reason - showing how user friendly services might cost the subscriber (in his case, when you have a metered service):

"Then a day or two ago, I got an email from Amazon with the bill for my Amazon AWS service. I have about 25 gigabytes of photos, music and other documents backed up to Amazon’s S3 server cloud, which usually costs me about $3 a month — but this time, the bill said $109 .. The culprit, apparently, was either Windows indexing the files or an anti-virus program scanning them, or both. Since JungleDisk [see the chart for its "bandwidth Limiting Function"] maps the Amazon cloud folder as a network drive, Windows and some other programs simply treat it as a regular drive and download all the files to scan them — even multiple times"

See below Amazon's "Data Transfer Pricing" information.

See "What Happens When the Cloud Meets a Bandwidth Cap" - here.

Canada's UBB: Telus will offer "a really customer friendly" Service

 
Canada's metered DSL service story continues (background - here, here) the operators and ISPs are pretty active, at least on the announcement  side, saying that customer even like it.

Andrew Weichel reported to CTV News that Shaw's CEO, Bradley Shaw (picture), said in a Shaw executive conference call that " ..customers have shown a recognition that the principle of ‘if you use more, you should pay more' holds true .. customers professed little willingness to switch providers if usage-based billing is imposed"

Telus spokesman Shawn Hall (picture) told the reporter that "... his company will also be implementing usage-based fees later this year for anyone exceeding their monthly cap. It's going to be really customer friendly You'd be forgiven for the first month you go over. You'd get lots of warning, lots of notice that you were going over with options of moving to other plans."

see "Shaw planning to revive metered internet billing: critics" - here.

In parallel to the above, it is not clear if Bell can correctly measure consumption for its retail and ISP customers. Karl Bode reports to DSLReports.com that "Bell in Canada, who recently acknowledged their DSL usage meter didn't work very well, and isn't particularly good at accurately tracking wireless data usage either".

See "Bell Still Struggling to Meter Usage Accurately" - here.

Every [Canadian] Family Needs a CIO

  

Read about the case of Mathew Ingram (picture), a journalist that became an IT manager in his household trying to detect how his home network consumed 95 GB in 6 days or 100 GB in two days leading to overcharge fees by his ISP - Rogers. 

Posted to Gigaom - "How Bandwidth Caps Force Us All to Become Network Cops" - here.

See also the long story of Usage based Billing in Canada - start here, and "Rogers [Canada] Admits its P2P Traffic Management Impacts Interactive Gaming" - here.

Resource: DPI Literature Review

     

A new document, prepared by Christopher Parsons (picture) for the "New Transparency Project’s Cyber-Surveillance Workshop", "takes up the most prominent scholarly analyses of the technology [DPI]. Given Canada’s arguably leading role in regulating the technology, many of its regulator’s key documents and evidentiary articles are also included".

See "Literature Review of Deep Packet Inspection" - here.

"In summary, this literature review addresses some of the motives and strategies of digitally mediated surveillance actors, relationships between actors involved in DPI based surveillance, the politics of DPI, the impact of DPI on personal privacy, and how novel technical configurations promote surveillance and challenge privacy. Prior to examining the literature itself, however, I briefly discuss how DPI functions as a technology and introduce the reader to some of the technical terminology associated with it".

Canada's Usage based Billing - Bell Rethinks, Netflix to the Rescue

     

Bell Canada Usage based Billing story continues (see previous episodes here).

Now the carrier has a new idea - it proposed that " ..the CRTC implement a new wholesale Internet pricing model that supports investment, competition and choice. Called Aggregated Volume Pricing, or AVP, the model provides wholesale ISPs with complete pricing flexibility on a per-customer basis. It offers wholesale ISPs the flexibility to develop their own pricing approaches, while supporting the fundamental principle that those who use less network capacity do not subsidize those that use the most .. In the case of legacy networks, the vast majority of ISPs will not have to pay for AVP because Bell will provide a significant usage credit up to 41 GB per user on an aggregate basis. As long as the ISP average does not exceed 41 GB per user, it will not have to pay AVP".

For more details on "How the AVP model works" see "Bell’s Aggregated Volume Pricing (AVP) proposal for high-speed Internet services used by wholesale ISPs" - here.

On the same day, Neil Hunt (picture), Chief Product Officer, Netflix was there to help his loyal Canadian customers, in a different way.

In the company's blog, Neil announces that "starting today, watching movies and TV shows streaming from Netflix will use 2/3 less data on average, with minimal impact to video quality. Now Canadians can watch 30 hours of streaming from Netflix in a month that will consume only 9 GBytes of data, well below most data caps ..Any member can adjust the settings anytime by visiting the Manage Video Quality page, found under Your Account .. In the past, viewing 30 hours of Netflix could consume as much as 70 GBytes, if it was all in HD, and typically about 30 GBytes".

So, with the new proposal from Bell, Netflix users may go back to the previous quality!

See "Netflix Lowers Data Usage By 2/3 For Members In Canada" - here.
   

Canada: The Government will Overrule CRTC's Usage Fees

 

The saga around the CRTC decision on usage fees (see "Canada: Wholesale Usage Fees Delayed" - here) continues.

Now, Tony Clement, Canada's Industry Minister, says - ""We asked the CRTC to review their decision, and if they come back with the same decision the cabinet would overrule it because it wouldn't be consistent with government policy ... promoting competition and choice" (See "Canada's Industry Minister Clement will overrule CRTC's usage based billing proposal" - here ).  

It is always a pleasure to see democracy in action!

The official ministry site says (see "Minister Clement Talks Digital Economy with University of Alberta Students" - here): "The Government expressed its concern over this decision, and its possible effect on consumers, small businesses, entrepreneurs, and innovators in Canada. In order to continue to innovate and participate in the digital economy, Canadians must have meaningful choice in their Internet services and the opportunity to take full advantage of advanced online applications".

Canada: Wholesale Usage Fees Delayed

  

The Canadian regulator, CRTC, decided few weeks ago to allow wholesale carriers to use metered (usage based) billing (see "CRTC [Canada] Approves Usage Based Billing to Bell Canada" - here). The decision was quickly translated into usage-based charging by Canadian ISPs (see "Canadian ISPs Charge DSL Subscribers for Over-Consumption" - here).

Now, the chairman of the CRTC, Konrad von Finckenstein, Q.C. (picture), announced that the CRTC has decided to "Delay the implementation of usage-based billing for wholesale customers by at least 60 days and Launch, of our own motion, a review of our decision to verify that:

1. it protects consumers
2. those who use the Internet heavily pay for their excess use, and
3. Small ISPs retain maximum flexibility and continue to be a key source of innovation in the industry."

See "Statement from the Chairman of the CRTC on usage-based billing" - here.

Primus, for example, announced that (here) "In light of the CRTC’s recent announcement to review their decision and delay the implementation of Usage Based Billing, Primus will not implement usage caps on our internet service for at least 60 days, pending final direction from the CRTC".

I can’t see any change to Bell Internet "Get answers to your Internet usage questions" page (here).

Nevertheless, the CRTC message emphasizes that "We are convinced that Internet services are no different than other public utilities, and the vast majority of Internet users should not be asked to subsidize a small minority of heavy users. For us, it is a question of fundamental fairness. Let me restate: ordinary users should not be forced to subsidize heavy users "

Canadian ISPs Charge DSL Subscribers for Over-Consumption

  

Usage based billing was recently a hot topic in the wireless space (for example - it makes AT&T happy - here), and for a blink of a second in the US cable market.

Now, after the Canadian regulator approval (see "CRTC [Canada] Approves Usage Based Billing to Bell Canada" - here) we can see it being implemented by retail ISPs on the DSL service as well.

Bell Internet explains (here - Bell's "Tracker" utility pictured) that "If you exceed your usage allowance, the excess usage will be charged at the rate specified in your Bell Internet plan. There is a maximum usage overage charge of $60/month for usage up to 300 GB. In addition, an extreme usage charge of $1.00/GB applies for usage exceeding 300 GB per month .. Although the extreme usage charge will be introduced to all customers, 99% of customers do not exceed the extreme threshold of 300 GB per month. In fact, less than 2% of customers exceed 100 GB per month and an average customer uses approximately 11.5 GB per month".

Primus Canada introduced the following policy (here - unlike what the video below says) - "Commencing February 2011, your existing High Speed Internet plan will now have 25GB (gigabytes) of monthly usage included. Additional usage up to 300GB will be charged at $2.00/GB to a maximum of $60.00/month. Usage in excess of 300GB per month will be charged an additional $1.10/GB".

Shaw - see video below

CRTC [Canada] Approves Usage Based Billing to Bell Canada

 

A recent decision by the Canadian regulator, CRTC, allows Bell Canada to use metered (usage based) billing in its wholesale broadband service:

"In this decision, the Commission approves the Bell companies’ request to review and vary Telecom Decision 2010-255 with respect to the implementation of usage-based billing for their Gateway Access Services (GAS) customers and with respect to equivalent treatment as it relates to promotions. The Commission also approves the Bell companies’ request regarding the level of rates for the GAS UBB component and excessive usage charge, and initiates a proceeding to examine whether the rates for the UBB components of GAS and of third-party Internet access service should be lower than the comparable retail UBB rates. Finally, the Commission denies the Bell companies’ request to readjust the costs used to determine the flat-fee component of GAS."

See "Telecom Decision CRTC 2010-802" - here.

CBCNEWS reports (here) that based on this decision - ".. Bell will charge wholesale service providers a flat monthly fee to connect to its network, and for a set monthly usage limit per each ISP customer the ISP has. Beyond that set limit, users will be charged per gigabyte, depending on the speed of their connections. Customers using the fastest connections of five megabits per second, for example, will have a monthly allotment of 60 GB, beyond which Bell will charge $1.12 per GB to a maximum of $22.50. If a customer uses more than 300 GB a month, Bell will also be able to implement an additional charge of 75 cents per gigabyte."

While in mobile service, usage based billing gains traction (leading to Bill Shock Prevention regulation), in fixed services (cable or DSL) there is still hesitation to implement it after so many years of flat rates (see - AT&T). No wonder a wholesale giant like Bell can do it, potentially leaving the small ISPs with no other choice.  It seems that "fair use" policies are more common today (example - Telenet)

Web Filtering Study from Sprouts

    

A recent document published by Sprouts covers the Web Filtering technology and implementation.

See "A Concise Study of Web Filtering" - here.

The document covers:

• Web filtering techniques: Rating, black list, keyword  matching and Dynamic Filtering
   
• Deployment options: national , ISP, organization, individual or 3rd party level
   
• The national deployments in Australia, Canada, UK and China.

Web filtering is a perfect add-on to DPI systems, and may be used as a Value-added Service by ISPs (as well as regulation conformance).



Related posts:

• DPI Deployment (15) : TalkTalk Uses Huawei to Detect Malware (or Parental Control ?)  - here
• Chile: First Country to Legislate Net Neutrality  - here
• Israeli Police Instructs ISPs to Block Gambling Web Sties - here
• Australia: Telstra, Optus and Primus Agree to Voluntarily Block Illegal Web Traffic - here
• DPI Deployments (9): Orange France Selects Openet and Cisco for Parental Control and Tethering Prevention - here
• Kosher Mobile Internet - Cellcom Israel Offers Web Filtering - here

Canada: Traffic Management Regulation Applies to Mobile Data

     

The Canadian regulator, CRTC, decided last week that its "ITMP (see below) policy framework set out in Telecom Regulatory Policy 2009-657 applies to the use of mobile wireless data services to provide Internet access".

See "Telecom Decision CRTC 2010-445 - Modifications to forbearance framework for mobile wireless data services" - here.

The distinction between wireless and wireless services exist in other countries, as the way these operators got their licenses and the competition level is different. While you may have only one broadband service available (usually an incumbent carrier which used to be a country owned PTT) a number of wireless services are there to chose from (which paid for the licenses). Supporters of Net Neutrality naturally like it to be implemented by all ISPs and carriers.

CRTC's ITMP (Internet traffic management practices), adapted on October 21, 2009. The, it was not applicable to wireless services, and determined that ISPs traffic management:

• Should be transparent, address a specific need and "not unjustly discriminatory nor unduly preferential"
   
• Cannot block internet traffic
   
• Allowed to delay non-time-sensitive applications ("P2P file sharing applications") [which may be considered as not "Net Neutrality" correct)
   
• Not allowed to delay real-time-sensitive applications ("real-time audio or video")

Related post: "DPI Deployments - Part7: Canadian ISPs" - here. See also "Canada Approves Consumption-Based Billing" - here.

DPI Deployments - Part7: Canadian ISPs

   

Colin Bennett and Christopher Parsons started a new web site, Deep Packet Insepction (Canada), with the goal of creating awareness in the Canadian public to how and where DPI is used, mainly by the privacy aspects.

One of the sections lists the current status of DPI usage among Canadian ISPs (here). I summarized the DPI deployment status for each covered ISP in the table below - you may click the ISP name to get more details.

ISP	Use DPI	Monitoring Only	Traffic Management	Traffic Prioritization	Billing
Barrett Xplore Inc.	Y		●	●
Bell Canada (includes Bell Aliant and Bell Mobility)	Y		●		●
BraggCommunications Inc.	Y		●
Cogeco Cable Canada Inc.	Y		●		●
MTS Allstream Inc.	N
PrimusTelecommunications Inc.	Y			●
Rogers Cable Communications Inc.	Y		●	●
Saskatchewan Telecommunications	Y	●
Shaw Communications Inc.	Y		●
TELUS Communications Company	N
Videotron Ltd.	N