khristopher.com

So Thursday night I noticed my torrents were downloading absurdly slow. I’m talking slower than dial-up speeds circa 1995. After some fooling around and checking that it wasn’t something I did or the tracker I was getting the torrents from, I called Bell Sympatico.

The "technician" did a check to make sure it wasn’t my connection. I put technician in quotations, because really they know nothing more than the average internet user in most cases. It turns out it is because I’m using torrents, as I’m able to download regular files just fine from web pages. And web pages are loading just fine as well.

I then expressed my dissatisfaction at this, and that I was not sent a letter in the mail, or an e-mail, or any kind of notification that this would be happening to me. Apparently according to Mirko Bibic in an interview with Roberto Rocha of the Montreal Gazette, it’s 5% of users who are sucking up 50% of Bell’s available bandwidth. Apparently I’m one of those 5%, because the technician I was speaking with on the phone told me that I’m making the speeds for those in my neighbourhood slower because I’m using up all the available bandwidth. BULLSHIT! I don’t max out my connection! I don’t allow it because then my browsing speeds will suffer. I limit my connection to 200 kB/s download which is half of my available download bandwidth, and I limit my upload speed to 40 kB/s which again is half my upload bandwidth speed.

So now I’m getting dial up speeds, but paying for unlimited high speed internet, and the worst part is there is no alternative! Rogers is doing the same crap, but also have monthly caps set, and if you go over those caps, you pay more for your bandwidth. The third party resellers who use Bell’s lines, are also being throttled. I remember Bell would always mention why their Sympatico service was better than cable internet because you wouldn’t experience any slowdowns when traffic was high on the network. That you wouldn’t be affected by those in your neighbourhood when they were sucking up speed. Whatever happened to that?

I got a number to call the corporate office which I will be doing on Monday. I’ve also signed a petition, which I recommend you sign as well. It’s almost at 10,000 signatures right now. The CRTC has received a complaint and hopefully they will step in and do something, but I don’t know if I have a lot of confidence in the CRTC.

I also think this has more to do with other things that we are not being told. I have a feeling that Canadian ISP’s are facing pressure from movie and music companies, and by limiting speeds to the people who are downloading movies and TV shows and music through Bit Torrent technology, they will not bother anymore. So basically that leaves ISP’s controlling what we download and when and how. Since when do the Canadian ISP’s own the internet?

Click here to sign the petition.

Well after the previous entry regarding the nasty comments on my blog, Iain felt the need to leave some more, just to add fuel to the fire.

He says the comments I pointed out in that entry were not left by him. I don’t believe him, but whatever. He also said that I’m not disabled, that I’m just lazy. I’m not, and never have said I am disabled. I have a disability which is preventing me from working right now. My doctor and the people who are financially supporting me right now also feel the same. Professionals believe I am not able to work right now, but Iain knows all apparently, even though we hung out only a handful of times and refused to talk to me on the phone. According to him:

If you’d actually make an attempt to get off your ass and get a job, you might have some potential at becoming a half-decent human being.

Oh, do half decent human beings say things like this:

Too bad it didn’t happen a few floors lower.

That was his comment on my entry about the fire in my building. I didn’t publish his comment obviously, but apparently half-decent human beings say things like that to other people. It’s quite obvious he meant that it’s too bad it didn’t happen in my house. That’s not just wrong on many levels to say to someone, but also downright creepy.