Bell Canada throws your packets away

By Michael Fraase

Wednesday, 26 March 2008 07:57PM CST

Section: Internet

Cat 5 cableBell Canada believes it owns the Canadian internet—no surprise there—but apparently also believes it owns what travels across its network. The Canadian telecommunications monopoly has begun throwing away network packets of its customers that the monopoly deems, well, disposable I suppose. According to Cory Doctorow’s analysis at boingboing, “Bell Canada’s position is that the Canadian Internet belongs to it, and that it has the right and duty to simply toss out packets based on which protocol they’re running on, in order to maximize profits.”

If all of the world’s telecommunications concerns took this attitude, there would be no internet, no web, and certainly no voice over internet protocol. The internet was founded on the principle that no one has to ask permission from anyone else to develop a service or protocol on the network.

This is precisely why we must return to a common-carrier model with regard to the internet: the owners of the wires must provide equal access to all comers. The pipe owners should not be held responsible, nor should be allowed to censor, anything that traverses their networks. If not—if we continue to let the network owners dictate what can and cannot happen on their networks—that’s the end of innovation and by extension the end of the internet. As Doctorow eloquently states, “From here on in, every new feature you want to add to the Internet depends on your capacity to send guys in suits to meetings with all the world’s telcos and convince them that your idea won’t hurt them.”

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