Us Too!

Living in Canada sometimes you just go without the luxuries our neighbours to the south enjoy. No, not Mexico the other one.

Over the years names like Old Navy, Starbucks, Taco Bell and Best Buy have made their way north. And we have rejoiced. Well except Taco Bell, that stuff goes right through me.

But with the good must come the bad (like Taco Bell). It's called traffic shaping. Internet Service Providers (ISP), like Rogers & Bell (well that's pretty much it I'm afraid) are deciding what has priority on their network and degrading your service that you have payed for.

ISPs say that demand for network bandwidth is out stripping supply, but instead of building out their networks and upgrading service (which they should be doing anyway) they have decided to throttle the internet.

In my opinion the ISPs have painted themselves into a corner by promising customers a certain (high) speed that they can no longer guarantee if everyone actually uses the service at the same time. Here are some examples for perspective. Imagine the electric company downgrading your service during peak hours for fears of brown outs. Or if your city ran out of water in the morning because everyone was having a shower before work. What if your phone only worked sometimes due to lack of lines? There would be huge outrage right? People would demand the level of service that they are paying for and these utilities would be held accountable.

The truth is ISPs don't throttle or pack shape to safe guard the integrity of their networks. They don't want you downloading content because they offer television or downloadable services themselves and you'd be cutting into their margins.

I love eventually getting everything the United States has. Us Too!