Update April 8th 2009: There’s a Bell autodialer reporting that Twitter charges will be refunded.

I’ve been experimenting with Twitter‘s resumed SMS service in Canada. Right now it only works with Bell Mobility and, well, I’m a Bell subscriber. Twitter claims the service is free but I quickly heard reports of fifteen cent charges cropping up on the #belltwit hashtag. I decided to do my own experiment while waiting for Twitter’s correction.

Yesterday at about four o’clock I sent a message to 21212. I forgot to input my PIN, so I got back an error message. I sent another message with my PIN this time and it got posted. Next, I got someone to DM me so that I could receive a SMS, and then I got the same person to post a public message after I enabled “device updates” for his account. I received both the DM and the public message, then called *611 to see what the charge was.

Long story short, I was told to call back today. I logged in to my Bell account and saw six new charges. One was “text message from internet” and five were “txt message – short code programs.” So I called *611 again.

Total charge: $0.45. I asked them to look up the Twitter short code as a biller and apparently it’s not there as a subscription service, so you’re not being charged for incoming messages.

Bell has since confirmed that they won’t charge for incoming messages from Twitter. This is consistent with what I found out through billing. I sent two messages, so get charged $0.30, plus I got a message from Google Calendar, adding the other $0.15. I didn’t realize that Google Calendar messages costed so I’ll be cancelling those today.

Update: Original Bell press release says charge was intended to be incoming and outgoing.

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• For Whom The Bell Texts (twitter.com)

photo credit: Seattle Municipal Archives

The CBC has managed to round up most of the telecom issues in one post about the election. Among them are the new fees for incoming SMS messages, throttling of third party DSL ISPs, and the lack of competition on the wireless front.

The last good point that they made is that too few people know about the ccts. That’s the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services. If you’re at your wit’s end and an executive letterbomb isn’t your style, give it a shot. Filing a complaint is easy.

The CBC article missed one thing, though. There are rumours curculating that Bell plans to take back quick GPS locks on some of their mobile devices. There hasn’t been any official confirmation, one of the Bell employees on dslreports.com says it’s unlikely, but even if it goes through there’s a good primer on what might happen from the comments section at a post by Michael Geist. At worst, AGPS might get the axe unless you pay an additional fee. I’d still be able to get a free and accurate lock on my HTC Touch but it’d take a while. I suppose I can live with that.

As Minister of Industry, I am responsible for the Telecommunications Act, which sets out the objectives of Canadian telecommunications policy. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), an independent public authority, is charged with implementing these objectives in its role as regulator of the telecommunications industry.

Canadian consumers can choose their ISP in a competitive marketplace, where prices are not regulated. Indeed, the competition between telephone and cable networks, as well as satellite, wireless and other players, has
ensured that Canadians have a variety of choices, in terms of both price and quality, when selecting an ISP. Provisions in the Telecommunications Act and Competition Act ensure that the competitive marketplace operates effectively.

Under section 27 of the Telecommunications Act, the CRTC has the authority to address issues of unjust discrimination or undue preference in order to ensure that the marketplace operates fairly and effectively. If consumers feel that carriers are engaging in unjust discrimination or undue preference, complaints can be brought to the CRTC, where they are subject to a formal process. The recently created Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services (www.ccts-cprst.ca) has also strengthened consumer protection with regard to telecommunications, and was established precisely to address consumer complaints on deregulated telecommunications services, such as Internet access.

In addition to the measures available under the Telecommunications Act, the Competition Act carries the power to address anti-competitive behaviour by ISPs, including cases of abuse of dominance and misleading advertising. The Competition Bureau ensures that prices in all sectors of the economy, except those that are regulated, are set by market forces and are not the result of anti-competitive behaviour. Under the abuse of
dominance provisions in the Competition Act, it is illegal for a dominant firm to engage in the practice of anti-competitive acts resulting in a substantial lessening of competition, including disciplining or targeting competitors in order to raise prices or reduce customer choice.

As you may know, the Canadian Association of Internet Providers (CAIP) has filed a complaint with the CRTC regarding Bell’s traffic management practices. While I cannot comment on specific matters before the CRTC, please note that the Commission regulates wholesale access by independent ISPs to high-speed Internet access services from both telephone and cable companies. Under the CRTC’s regulatory framework for wholesale services, Bell is required to provide access to its DSL network to independent ISPs at regulated rates and terms of service. If the CRTC finds Bell or any other network operator to be in violation of these terms or otherwise engaging in unjust discrimination or undue preference, the CRTC has the power to address these issues under the Telecommunications Act.

Access to the Internet is a key issue for Canadians. Industry Canada is monitoring domestic and international developments to ensure that our legislative and regulatory frameworks remain effective. Should you believe carriers are engaging in unjust discrimination and undue preference, I encourage you to contact the CRTC at 1-877-249-2782 or by e-mail at info@crtc.gc.ca. Please note that, on May 15, 2008, the CRTC set out a process to address the issues raised in CAIP’s above-noted application. Further details regarding this application and the CRTC’s recently announced process to look into the matter can be found on its website at www.crtc.gc.ca.

Once again, thank you for taking the time to write, and I trust that you will find this information helpful.

Sincerely,

The Honourable Jim Prentice, P.C., Q.C., M.P.

The interview with Nora Young of Spark went over general issues of net neutrality, which is why my questions weren’t asked. My questions were a bit more technical and Nora felt they were already answered either in The Current or an article in The Gazette. I’m still not content despite these three pieces.

I’ll lay out my biggest problems with the interviews so far: They all include Bell claiming they need to do this to maintain network integrity, they give no explanation of where the congestion occurs or why they moved their throttling from the transit level to the DSLAM level, and they fudge the differences between wholesalers and resellers.

For example, from the Gazette article:

What they do instead is they buy a wholesale, end-to-end Internet product and put their brand around it. Then they don’t have the ability to manage their own network. It’s the same network shared between retail and wholesale. Those ISPs that bothered to invest in their own infrastructure, this problem doesn’t affect them. The use of the term “leased lines” isn’t quite accurate and I see that in a number of newspaper articles. It’s a very, very important point.

If it’s wholesale, it’s not an end-to-end Internet product. If it’s wholesale, the ISP has to provide their own transit. Bell will just provide the point to point connection that connects the user to the ISP. The ISP provides the connection to the internet. TekSavvy is not an end-to-end Bell technology. It just takes one trip to their DSL sales page to realize that.

This service is intended as a two-tiered option where you can go DSL Unlimited over Cogent (5ms to 15ms more latency) or if you prefer a premium option, DSL over Peer1 (premium routing). The difference between Unlimited and Premium Capped service is in its use of internet onramps. Call for further details!

TekSavvy, along other wholesalers like Eagle.ca, is being throttled even though they’re using an entirely different transit provider. The big question is whether or not this is covered under the tariff as reasonable network maintainence. Is the DSLAM the point of congestion? Is throttling there necessary to maintain the integrity of the network? Is Bell even entitled to throttle at the DSLAM level? No one has tried to answer this.

My inclination is “no.” All of the ISPs that built up transit capacity were able to handle the traffic without their customers complaining. The throttling has impacted all sorts of traffic, not just peer to peer, which isn’t even as big of a hog as YouTube. There are scads of problems without any transparency or even demonstration of why the throttling has to occur at the DSLAM, let alone whether Bell should be allowed.

As the CEO of TekSavvy says,

This is the exact problem and where Bell doesn’t get it. TekSavvy and all third party ISPs are paying for a “slice” of this network, so no, it’s not Bell’s at that point. They’re paid to make sure the infrastructure remains in good shape, but they’re not paid to police it! The flaw in Bell’s thought is in their not understanding that we’ve paid for the right to this space… We’ve paid for multiple Gig-E connections for the data to flow back to; we’ve paid for the DSL aggregation interface (AHSSPI) and we’re also paying on a per user basis (approx $20/month) to have the data relayed directly back to our main point of Interconnect.

So, in short, no, they don’t have rights to this network segment… An easy analogy would be a landlord, who is managing an apartment, gives himself a key to come in and out as he pleases and on top of that decide which tenants friends they let in! I’m not sure about you, but I’m fairly certain, one; the tenant would call the police, but two; you’d land up with a very big black-eye!

I’m on Bell’s $7 unlimited browsing plan. The Terms of Service clearly state that streaming audio is not allowed. It’s one of those clauses that they use to terminate accounts that go over some sliding limit of profitable bandwidth use. Since this month I had only used four megabytes and the average for killed accounts seems to be about two thousand, I decided to push my luck. I decided to forego my iPod in favour of my HTC Touch and Windows Media Player. (The Touch is notable as being the only smartphone able to get a consumer unlimited data plan in Canada.)

My stream of choice was Digitally Imported’s Trance stream. I gave it a go at home on the 96 kilobit WMA stream and was surprised to hear very choppy music with the default buffering. I benchmarked my phone at an average download of 400 kilobit over download, and now it can’t take 96 kilobit? I double checked and Windows Media Player was set for a 384 kilobit cellular connection. When using TCPMP I was able to get 96 kilobit MP3 reliably without any changes to buffer settings but I spent most of the day using WMP.

I set myself up for 40 kilobit music stream. It played on my phone just fine with the basic Windows Media Player that came with the device. Next up: Getting this music through my headphones.

This was trickier. The phone itself has no headphone jack. It does come with a gadget that splits the USB mini jack into USB jack and what they label a headphone jack. It’s not your standard 8mm jack, it’s about the same size as a USB-mini jack but asymmetric and skewed. I assume it’s some jack that’s meant for cellular headsets. There’s also a converter to something sub-8mm that I found useless. Into this splitter I plugged in a pair of earphones with the skewed adapter that came with the Touch.

At 40 kilobit I was able to walk around downtown Toronto towards campus with no skips or bumps. Instead of being pleased with this I was just disappointed that I couldn’t use my own headphones. It’s impossible to give a good judgement of sound quality here.

Even in a noisy environment I’m able to tell the difference between 40 kilobit WMA and 96 kilobit WMA when using the pair of AKG K27i headphones I use for walkabouts. And that’s not even considering the pair of Sennheiser HD555 that I use for home enjoyment of music. On the pair that came with the device I couldn’t tell between 40 kilobit and 96 kilobit in a quiet environment, and I haven’t figured out how to connect my real headphones yet.

So far the only thing I can say is it’s a pain.

Unfortunately I feel a bit of a disconnect here. iOptOut will be useful for my parents, sure, but I don’t own a landline and neither does anyone I know. Everyone has gone cellular, partly because it’s cheaper and partly because there’s no telemarketers.

With MobileMiser you can set up what they call callback direct. You associate your destination with one of three phone numbers. When you dial this number you get a busy signal like any callback, and then MobileMiser will connect you to your associated destination without any extra dialing. Very cool. This is great for people whose phones don’t have a calling card feature or don’t let you use your contact list in the middle of a call.

Because it’s a callback it is a little more expensive than a dialthrough. I’ll give an example using Toronto prices. Renting a DID (essentially a number for people to dial) generally costs under ten dollars per month plus $0.011 per minute incoming. Outgoing is about $0.02 per minute in Canada/US. Of course volume discounts apply, and I do see some emerging DIDs that have unlimited minutes, but in general the trend I see is outgoing calls cost more than incoming calls to Toronto. A callback that has to make two outgoing calls is going to cost more than a callthrough that has one incoming call and one outgoing call.

So, is the convenience of having this associated number worth paying MobileMiser‘s 4.9c per minute over xpresscall‘s 3.33c per minute? Not to me, but still, very cool feature.

It’s $300 US for the basic kit which is pretty well stocked. It includes the stylus, headset, carrying pouch, a half gig memory card, lanyard and the data cable. The $450 developer kit stuffs all that into a big padded toolbox plus a debug board, extra battery and memory card, extra USB cable as well as a Torx T6 screwdriver and a guitar pick to pop the thing open.

The openmoko site has been updated. It has many more details than before but the best sources of information remain the mailing lists. The announce list is a good one to be on as a bare minimum, the others tend to be high volume. I’m still waiting on a better data plan before I replace my phone but this is a good candidate.

The Star has the story. Telus is wary of the merger not being allowed.

…

Vancouver-based Telus, the country’s second-biggest phone company, confirmed Thursday it has entered into a mutual non-disclosure and standstill agreement and is pursuing non-exclusive discussions with BCE about a possible merger. “Telus believes the combination of the two businesses would represent a compelling strategic and financial opportunity for all BCE and Telus stakeholders,” [Telus] CEO Darren Entwistle said in a release.

…

Federal Industry Minister Maxime Bernier acknowledged last week the government is aware of the fierce debate around whether Canada’s mobile market lacks competition as industry players exchanged barbs over whether the country’s main mobile companies – BCE, Telus and Rogers Communications Inc. (TSX: RCI.B) – have already become too dominant.

…

Recent media reports, quoting sources close to the company, said Telus was unlikely to join the bidding unless there has a clear signal from Ottawa that it would not block a marriage of the country’s two largest telecommunications companies.

This news comes just as the set-aside for the spectrum auction is being discussed. I think that this will generate some more comments angled towards helping new entrants. I’m reminded of the Rogers buyout of Fido, which I couldn’t believe was allowed, and also the mergers in the US.

And now for a word from Stephen Colbert on the mergers.. [Here's an alternate link if the embedded video goes down.]

Update June 27th 2007: All that hype for nothing. Telus did not bid on BCE after all. “The inadequacies of BCE’s bid process did not make it possible for Telus to submit an offer,” said the Vancouver-based firm in a terse, two-line statement.