In response to the complaint lodged against Bell Canada's degradation of the service it provides to its wholesale internet customers, the company is pushing back.
Bell Canada says it is downgrading the Internet services of bandwidth hogs in the public interest, and is asking the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to toss out a landmark complaint by competitors alleging the telecom giant is regulating the web in its own interests.
I love that invocation of the public interest. The small ISPs and their customers are part of the public too so essentially Ma Bell's position is that she's providing us with defective service — and not incidentally violating our privacy with "deep packet inspection" — for our own good. I guess it's true that no one will ever love us like our mother does.
So when people signed up for Bell Canada's internet service, did the company indicate that if they actually used all of the service it was selling it would call them names and use them to justify invasions of privacy and anti-competitive practices? What's next? Will Ma Bell start suing her own customers like Big Music does?
Technology expert Jesse Hirsch says Bell's argument before the CRTC is bewildering - and bad news for consumers. He says Bell is acknowledging it failed to anticipate the growth of the Internet, and is now penalizing innovative users who are turning to the web to swap TV shows and movies."They say their service is at capacity, they admit that. As a subscriber and shareholder, you have to ask yourself, 'How did this come about?'"
The solution shouldn't be to curb innovative uses of the Internet by "savvy young people who are doing an end run around Bell ExpressVu and Rogers Cable," but rather invest more in infrastructure to accommodate these users
It does begin to sound familiar, doesn't it? A company that failed to anticipate events and adapt accordingly now wants to make punishing its customers — in this case its wholesale customers — part of its business model.
Hat-tip to Saskboy.
I like quoting Hirsh, he actually GETS it when it comes to modern technology and information.
It surely does sound familiar.
I think, though, that it's not so much making customer punishment part of its business model, as it is a desperate attempt to hold onto a failed business model, and customer punishment is just the first knee-jerk play they can think of.
Bell seems to be trying to manufacture scarcity and pretend it's a virtuous move. As Hirsh said, they didn't anticipate and therefore weren't able to adapt. Other actors, like RIAA or the movie studios, have gone one step further and lobbied hard to get governments to pass laws that will let them hold on to their failed business models. Flaherty was ready to toe the line, too, until the surge of "NO you effin' don't" public opinion made him back off.
It's rich. The same blowhard CEOs who wank on endlessly about the virtues of the free market and competition, and only slightly less endlessly about "the only constant is change" and "companies that don't adapt deserve to go under" -- all that platitudinous blather -- and who lavishly fund propaganda mills that grind that same message out relentlessly, well here they are now, completely at sea, bereft of ideas, terrified at the thought that their comfortable little fantasy bubble is about to pop.
Because they didn't pay attention, because they thought they were big enough and powerful enough to stop "change" in their favour, they didn't adapt (didn't think they had to). Now they're in deep trouble, pointing fingers, looking for anyone to blame but themselves, so naturally they're going to decide that Customer = Enemy.
Seriously, this is just like the Canadian cell phone market. Ugh.