March 26th, 2008
Save Teksavvy - Freeourbandwidth.com
I first heard about a third party Internet Service Provider called Teksavvy from my friend Phil, a former collague at Citytv. He swears by the ISP, an alternative to Bell and Rogers, which offers (offered) up unthrottled bandwidth (thx to an OLD deal from Bell) and (I hear) has the best customer service in the country (something that makes those of us who know Bell's "Emily" jump for joy). Well, the light at the end of Canada's dark history of traffic shaping (i.e. throttling P2P traffic, including services such as BitTorrent, etc.) is getting even more dim.
A Globe and Mail article announced today that "Bell was restricting the torrent and peer-to-peer traffic of Teksavvy customers. 'They [Bell] are screwing with our data, which is not their property,' said Teksavvy's CEO. 'Every single third-party ISP in Canada is going to be affected by this.'"
The very fact that Joe Public doesn't understand the terms traffic shaping and bandwidth throttling (and don't get me started on Net Neutrality) is a sigh of relief to executives at Canada's big ISPs. When customers aren't educated, customers have no voice. And let's face it, mainstream media doesn't do a great job of digging into this technical jargon.
A Facebook friend just sent me a link that will give you more info and allow you to show your support for Teksavvy and help you understand the state of ISPs in the Great White North.
Incidentally, I wonder just how much money Bell and Rogers make every year? I'm sure I can find those numbers pretty quickly online, which will immediately leave me wondering when these ISPs will start giving customers the services we want and the service we deserve for filling up their deep pockets.
March 26th, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (33)
Posted by: Sgtret | around about 1 month ago
Clue one south of Canadasg into Bell & Rogers. Are they like AT&T used to be in the US, or are they local to Ontario? People south of the long border have trouble naming the Provinces, never mind the media or telcom powerhouses that rule above the border. Wasn't it Rogers that fired Leo from the lab show? I just have a feeling that this has been a marvelous relatively free ride on the web for the past few years. Now that the powers-that-be have put down their morning paper and are waking up to another layer of communication that knows no borders; it will cost us, either fiscally or by loss of liberty of expression.
Posted by: Johnny Worthington | around about 1 month ago
Bandwidth Throttling = Australian Internet... We are Throttled after 12GB (and this is on a $AUD90/mo plan). At work we are on a $AUD130/mo plan which gives us 25GB, but charges us $0.15 per MB over. The kicker... this is for only 20000/512 speed, of which 2000/512 is the average (maximum) we ever acheive. I agree people should be educated and vote with thier wallets... but they still have to have somewhere else to go to :(
Posted by: Mike | around about 1 month ago
Here, here! I mean... how much does it really cost to purchase the high end routing and switching equipment? After that cost is covered, all you're paying for is labour to maintain the hardware (which shouldn't be that high, if you bought good enough stuff). // Judging by the relative lack of high-bandwidth Internet service in Canada, I'm going to assume that Rogers/Bell/Telus haven't *been* upgrading their networks that much and all our collective $30/month fees are going to maintenance. Of course, the vast majority of that income *must* be profit, or we'd see a lot more network maintenance guys rolling around in Porsche 911's instead of Chevy Astro vans. // I guess this is one situation where big government is A Good Thing. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the countries where High Speed are really fast and pervasive are countries that still have government-owned and operated telcos. I think as long as we have organizations whose bottom line comes down to protecting *their* bottom line controlling telecommunications (meaning, the physical wires and the service), we're never going to see progress in these areas.
Posted by: Benjamin | around about 1 month ago
How big of an ISP is Bell? I know their wireless phone and Satellite TV is big, but I didn't actually realize that they were that big. Here in Alberta, Shaw is big and they have began traffic shaping and killing competitive VOIP companies like Vonage in favor of their own "Shaw Digital Phone." Shaw will not "Shape Your Packets" against VOIP if you pay an extra $20 a month. . . Once again, the paying consumer suffers in order to fill the pockets of a deep company.
Posted by: SteveintheUK | around about 1 month ago
Evil Rogers has now been joined by it Bully Bell cousin. - - - - - - - - - Rogers First Quarter 2007 Corporate Fact Sheet - Consolidated LTM Revenues: $ 9,152M - Consolidated LTM Operating Profits: $ 3,076M - http://your.rogers.com/investorrelations/Q1_2007_FactSheet.pdf - - - - - - - - - Bell, BCE Financial Highlights for the Fourth Quarter of 2007 plus Q4 of 2006 - Operating revenues Q4,2007 = $4,549m Q4, 2006 = $4,532m - Profit Q4, 2007 = $1,668m - Q4, 2006 = $1,639m - http://www.bce.ca/en/investors/financialperformance/quarterlyresults/ - - - - - - - - - So basically, yes Rogers and Bell are screwing with TekSavvy and all it customers, We are starting to get a similar problem with bandwidth throttling in the UK now that over 2.2 million people have started streaming video from the BBC iPlayer since the start of the year. The iPlayer's video is 10mb per minute, so between around 7pm and 1am my VirginMedia broadband slows from 2MB down to between 256Kb and 800Kb, at least they have stopped just cutting my service of for 5 hours after watch a couple of hours of shows. I hope Colbert was worth watching tonight. L&L
Posted by: Chris Au | around about 1 month ago
I am a TekSavvy customer. I discovered them a little late, as I have been a customer for only six months. They were very nice at the time of the switch from my previous DSL provider, and I didn't have a minute of downtime. I haven't had to call them once for tech support as their service have been solid. I have been trying to get out the claws of Bell & Rogers, but I am still paying Bell for the land line (required due to the alarm system contract), and Rogers for TV. Do they (Bell & Rogers) not know BitTorrent is an effective means of transferring large files? Even the CBC (the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the taxpayer's TV network) just started to distribute one of their shows by BitTorrent this past week-end, DRM free BTW. There are of coruse, other things like various flavours of Linux distributions. We should all contact the CRTC, and let them know what we think.
Posted by: Shannon | around about 1 month ago
Although I am not first in line to defend the telcos (I pay $40 a month for 8MB of data on my Blackberry, WTF), they are shaping the traffic because a majority of the network traffic is being sucked by illegal bitorrent downloads from the 'Bay and other torrent trackers. My point is that for the rest of us who want to use the internet in a more positive manner, our connection speeds to legit sites are affected by the leechers.
Posted by: Bernard Ramsey | around about 1 month ago
I can't imagine that bandwidth capacity of the telcos is an issue here. This is about profits and protecting market share. I'm sure in the next few months or year, I'll receive an email or call from my ISP about a new offer for an upgraded internet plan that offers "significantly less bandwidth throttling." I'd almost bet the farm on it. BTW, what exactly is Amber looking at in her pic (top left) of the page. My guess is that Will or Brian learned to fly. Great post and new site design!
Posted by: Ryan LaFlamme | around about 1 month ago
The CRTC has set up an independent body to deal with Telecoms and their sneaky ways. Funny thing is, no one knows about them. It's called the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services (CCTC). Just rolls off the tongue huh? They have the power to mediate your complaints on all Internet and Cell Phone disputes, and can order the big boys to cough up up to $5000 if they are found to be wrong. Find them here: http://www.ccts-cprst.ca/en/Wiki.jsp?page=Membership All telecoms are required to be members, and are "supposed" to be letting their customers know there is a new place to bring their complaints. In fact, I plan on contacting them shortly regarding an issue with Telus Mobility (if Telus doesn't solve it). This stuff makes me mad, mad, mad.
Posted by: Dave Johnston | around about 1 month ago
In the States, wholesale bandwidth is 3 cents/GB...why are we throttling? I understand the "slow truck on the highway" argument, but capacity is so cheap and so overbuilt (in the States at least), I do NOT understand why service providers are choosing the adversarial path with their customers. If you sell "unlimited" you should provide actual unlimited use, period. I am a raging capitalist, but this is simply called being honest with your customers. (Go Canada btw...my entire lineage is from PEI via Scotland)
Posted by: Mike Kelly | around about 1 month ago
Gah! I really hate reading stuff like this. It gets my blood boiling, one of the reasons why I left IT to go study physics (hey waitasec, how did I end up doing freelance IT again? Doh!) With regards to Shannon's comment about illegal BitTorrent downloads. I just downloaded 2.2 GB of data via BitTorrent. Which movie did I pirate you ask? None. I grabbed a copy of CentOS Linux 4.0 for work. BitTorrent let me download it *quickly*, from multiple sources simultaneously. The problem with packet filtering and traffic shaping is that it affects everybody, legitimate transfers and otherwise. And don't get me started on what is legitimate or not. Hollywood and the Big Media Companies really, *really* need to clue in that their business models are being pulled out from under them and they need to adapt or die. The CBC took a step in the right direction with their BitTorrent release last week. I just canceled my Shaw High Speed connection this week, and have gone with a company called Novus in Vancouver. They run fibre optic cable to a number of buildings in downtown Vancouver and I'm lucky enough to live in one of them. Before I switched I did some research to try and determine if Novus traffic-shaped or not. I couldn't find anything so they seemed like a safe bet, and my 1.2 megabyte/second download rate seems to confirm that. We'll see how long that lasts. sigh.
Posted by: Chris Luckhardt | around about 1 month ago
Great post Amber. I've been a TekSavvy customer since May and also swear by them. Rocky and his team run a fantastic ISP with not only excellent service, but amazing customer service. Bell (and Rogers) can burn in hell.
Posted by: Reid | around about 1 month ago
As a long-time Tek Savvy customer, I am royally pissed. I am especially suspicious of the timing. This is happening just as Bell is rolling out its "Optimax" fibre-based internet service. I'll bet *it* doesn't have any throttling..
Posted by: MickB | around about 1 month ago
I had a cable connection of up to 5mb down but it was capped at 28kb down for 2 hours if I downloaded more than 30mb in 10 minutes. After numerous calls to cust service and their IT folks I finally got an honest answer when I called the CEO's office. I'm no longer a cable subscriber and had to downgrade to a 768kb DSL line but it's steady and honest and I'm much happier. It's Verizon in a rural area so they can only dump so much $$$'s in the area. Oh yeah, nice site too Amber :-)
Posted by: ailaG | around about 1 month ago
If it helps any, I live in Israel .. and here some ultraorthodox jews with a power trip, too much political power and complete ignorance regarding the Internet (their ultraorthodox rabis tell them it's not kosher to use it!) are half way through with passing a LAW that requires the ISPs to FILTER any content that's "indecent / violent / relates to gambling". (adults can ask for unfiltered Internet, but it's not that simple) So once it'll be a law, you know what will happen once a single indecent image will slip through. So you realize how evil the filters would be, and therefore how bad self-censorship will be. Data-throttling, in a way. Wah! (and there are a billion other problems with this law..)
Posted by: ailaG | around about 1 month ago
BTW newlines won't work in your comments box.
Posted by: Paul Preston | around about 1 month ago
Amber, Thanks for bringing this topic up. I have been a Techsavvy customer for about 9 months now. Their service is excellent, including Tech Support and Customer Service. I love being able to speak to a human when I have a question. No matter what B.S. Bell gets up to, I will not change ISP's. I have been a Bell, Cogeco, Rogers and, when I lived out west, a Telus customer. None of these ever provided the level of service that Teksavvy provides to me now. Anyways, thanks Amber for the link and anyone out there with Teksavvy..support them!
Posted by: Rob Metras | around about 1 month ago
When not constrained by vocal customers, governments, or a good understanding of the change that is shaking their retail markets to the foundation Canadian carriers, Canadian telcos will always behave badly. Its just in their DNA. The most interesting news came today on CNBC's Noon time news as BitTorrent and Comcast are getting together to make the best of the changing telecomm landscape in the US.
Posted by: Dave | around about 1 month ago
Thanks for posting this, Amber...I've never even heard of Teksavvy until now, so it's something I'll have to look into. I don't feel I have much to contribute to the discussion at hand. I'm just as frustrated with the situation, and Joe Public's ignorance of it, as everyone else. I think somebody needs to step up and take leadership of some kind of campaign to educate the public. Knowledge is power.
Posted by: Neil | around about 1 month ago
Thanks for posting about this, I had hoped you knew about it. Cheer's
Posted by: Jerry | around about 1 month ago
Amber, I'm curious how you get around the propietary issues of your interviews on Webnation. After your less than cardial departure from CityTV you have posted your Webnation interviews funded by them on your blog. The quality of the video however seems poor, almost as if they are recordings of a monitor that is playing the interview. Is this the case ? And if so, is that how you are able to re-broadcast the footage without permission/compensation ? There is no criticism here, just curiosity.
Posted by: SteveintheUK | around about 1 month ago
@Jerry I don't know about the proprietary issues of the Webnation interviews, but as for the quality, although Webnation was, and still is promoted on the CityNews website at - http://www.citynews.ca/blogs/webnation_9277.aspx - the actually video feed online was always only every hosted at Blip.TV, so watching the show/interviews don't cost CityNews, now Rogers, anything to host. The fact that CityNews/Rogers still has the Webnation blog up on they site must, I guess, mean that they are happy/give their permission for Amber to still promote Webnation, She just probably won't be able to use that name once/when/if she relaunches the show from her new studio. Hope that helps, I'm sure Amber will give more info once she getting bored of playing out in the sun and topping up her tan in Florida.
Posted by: Amber Mac | around about 1 month ago
@Jerry. The interviews are from Blip.tv. Am putting them online as more of an online video reel, not for any type of monetary payment. When I left Citytv it was on great terms with my direct manager who informed me that I could get any video I needed for reel-type purposes. In short, all good.
Posted by: Brent Morris | around about 1 month ago
When I moved into my apartment I investigated these smaller companies. Largely, because I'd heard and experienced so many horror stories about Bell and Rogers. But eventually settled on Rogers because I found out that all these small companies lease the infrastructure from one of those two companies anyway. Also I'd heard from a friend who tried out 3Web in Toronto, but when he had connection issues they had to rely on Rogers to sent a technician to fix it. So if at the end of the day you're still reliant on Rogers or Bell then what's the point in working with these smaller ISPs? I'm not saying that to be mean, I'm serious. I would use one of these independent ISPs in a heartbeat if they were truly independent of Bell and Rogers.
Posted by: Brent Morris | around about 1 month ago
And call me ignorant (because I am in this regard) but how does this issue get solved? <br><br> Does Teksavvy have to have the gazillions of dollars necessary to lay their own pipe? <br><br> Are we forever stuck in Duopoly.
Posted by: Brian McKechnie | around about 1 month ago
@Jerry - the system we have to export video from within CityNews is horrendous. In order to get a full episode of Webnation online we had to export from our AVID as three 10 min. chunks. Then put it back together in QuickTime and export it as a .MOV. After that it was uploaded to Blip.tv where it was encoded to Flash! Each episode took a full day to export and put online. In the end it looked like crap. -Brian
Posted by: Adam | around about 1 month ago
For some sense of perspective, according to Wikipedia, Bell Sympatico has "over 2 million" DSL subscribers. TekSavvy has 21 thousand.
Posted by: Ry-Tron | around about 1 month ago
There are a few easy ways around Rogers bittorrent throttling, as they've been throttling it since I subscribed 3 years ago (so this isn't anything new). The only reason it blew up recently is because the CBC was too cheap to host their own files and put them on a torrent site. Or on blip.tv. Or anywhere that doesn't ask their users to pay the cost for the necessary bandwidth. It's all about ports, and there's a couple that Rogers doesn't throttle as they handle things like their VOIP services. Find'em, use'em, and you'll get speedy torrents. Don't forget to encrypt the data being sent (usually an option in the torrent software). As for Bell, well, I don't use'em. The 7 megabit connection from Rogers works wonderfully for me, particularly when I download from a site that doesn't throttle individual visitors below the 7mb rogers cap. I've hit 800 kilobytes per second more than my fair share, which if you've never experienced it is like downloading a gigabyte of data in less than 15 minutes.
Posted by: Damean | around about 1 month ago
THANK YOU! THANK YOU for surfacing the issue! Somehow I think a full legal investigation is necessary to determine the terms of the contract Teksavvy, Acanac and the rest have with Bell. And frankly, we should be at the point where a break in line-lease monopoly should emerge, right? Or at least line sales instead of line leases. Yes I understand the implications of such a massive task. But I figure it has to come about at some point. What point that is is dependent on us subscribers and what we're willing to pay for superior service I guess. As it stands, ISPs aren't cheap... its just that, with our alternative providers, we've been getting far better bandwidth service, and HIGHLY SUPERIOR customer support... not to mention the fact that we have been getting the service we were promised.
Posted by: Mark Warburton | around 25 days ago
Thanks for giving this situation the publicity it deserves. I've been a very happy Teksavvy customer for more than a year and am hosting my Ottawa Foodies website using their excellent service -- something I wouldn't be able to do with Sympatico. BTW, I just discovered your site via an old TWIT episode (38). :-)
Posted by: xSmurf | around 19 days ago
@Brent Morris: ISPs only sublet the "last mile" (or two) from the big telco's. They provide the actual bandwidth to the backbone. One of the reason for that is the Bell and Rogers (and Videotron) have been protected for ages by the CRTC and now how all the links from the COs to houses. Replacing all of them would be impossible. Even these big companies couldn't afford it. As such, to allow better competition the CRTC forced the Telcos to lease that "last mile" to independent companies. You can see a good schematic of this here: http://www.dslreports.com/r0/download/1292401~9f6b07adff86c09bab21eaf8fd445826/Throttling.png
Posted by: Casy Niki | around 17 days ago
I have been using Tek Savy for about 8years now.. I jumped off the Bells ship years ago.. due to their tech support .. But now i have realized that even when you leave Bell still have control over the bandwidth one way or the other due to the fact that they still maintain your lines... so if there are any real issues with your lines and you are not getting the full bandwidth you are paying for I don't think we are in the know to receive the truth in regards to why your line quality is so bad, just try asking for what types of test or for the test results .. not the usual attenuation and snr results.. how do we know what they are telling us is the truth they are already lieing to us.. then ask them how or who is going to do any repairs on the lines to improve the through out .. or even ask to be placed onto a remote or dslam... good luck.. bell controls and owns the lines still.. so throttling is only part of the issues with unfair and unjust business practices the telcos are playing with us.. if we don't stop them from playing us for fools now where are the lines going to be drawn..(Don't forget our government has funded and given break to bell in regards to placing their infrastructure) especially with the boom on the content which is now available or the move to online desktops the internet is getting more and more important to are daily lives,almost to the point that it is an essential service ..... Who still watches cable tv anymore...?
Posted by: Sameer Vasta | around about 1 month ago
The more I read about Teksavvy, the more I'm impressed by the way they handle their business. What Bell is doing is just despicable. Are there any politicians we can write to or convince to take up action?