Apparently taking a page out of this month's advertising debate between AT&T and Verizon, Canadian carrier Telus has sued Rogers Communications for ads claiming that the Rogers wireless network is "the fastest and most reliable in the country." Telus and Bell Canada have of course just launched their new, $1 billion HSPA network, which offers speeds up to 21 Mbps to Canadian customers. As such, Telus demanded earlier this month that Rogers stop making advertising claims that they held the 3G speed edge -- a request Rogers ignored, since they too offer 21 Mbps HSPA+ service. "Telus has not submitted any data on their network performance and we look forward to vigorously defending our position in court," says Rogers.

Last year Canadian incumbent Bell Canada throttled the bandwidth of wholesale competitors, so they couldn't offer unthrottled services that were better than Bell's own, throttled DSL service. The company then started pushing for usage-based billing (UBB) for wholesalers, meaning competitors would now be paying for bandwidth on both ends (smaller Canadian ISPs lament this as double dipping and a tactic designed to drive them out of business). Bell Canada has justified the moves by saying they're financially necessary in order to fund network expansion. However, BCE's earnings this week indicate the company's profit more than doubled. Why was usage-based billing necessary again? Surely someday, somebody is going to notice that the North American ISPs who claim expensive new metering models are financially necessary are never able to prove it.

Calling it "the most significant technology announcement for the company in 25 years," Bell Canada CEO George Cope says the company will launch its HSPA wireless broadband network on Wednesday. The $1 billion network was built in conjunction with Telus, who says they'll launch their implementation of the network on Thursday. The new HSPA service will reach about 93% of the Canadian population, and offer speeds up to 21 Mbps (if anyone has pricing, drop us a line). Speaking of this week's decision by the CRTC to block access of a new carrier for not being Canadian enough, Cope proclaimed that "no one would be mistaken that there is not new competition coming to the Canadian wireless industry" (sic).

The CRTC earlier this year couldn't be bothered to come to the defense of independent ISPs facing extinction due to Bell Canada's sudden throttling efforts, but the regulatory agency amazingly came alive this week to stop the entry of a new wireless phone competitor in Canada. A CRTC ruling has banned Globalive, a new entrant into the Canadian market, from doing business in Canada.

While the United States FCC prepares to begin construction of new network neutrality rules tomorrow, users in Canada saw Canadian regulatory authority the CRTC issue some new network neutrality rules today. While the new rules don't prohibit Canadian ISPs from imposing the network management of their choice, they do force carriers to be wholly transparent with consumers, while giving retail customers thirty days and consumers at least 60 days before imposing any new traffic management.

Last week an FCC-commissioned report confirmed what most everybody but the FCC already knew thanks to countless other studies -- that United States broadband is a middle of the road performer, in part thanks to having no real broadband plan. Canadians are now taking note of the study as well, as it highlighted how Canada is lagging behind other industrialized countries in broadband speed, price and coverage. Of course none of this is particularly surprising when you note how Canada seems to have been mirroring the last decade of U.S. broadband policy -- which basically consists of a well-lobbied regulator doing whatever the wealthiest carriers tells them to do.

A few years ago, you'd be hard pressed to find a Canadian who knew what network neutrality was, despite the fact we've been debating about the idea here in the States since around 2005. The only reason Canadians hadn't been made aware of the issue is they weren't being shown clear examples of potential violations, like when AT&T CEO "Big Ed" Whitacre began mumbling about "free rides," Clearwire blocked VoIP traffic completely on their network, or Comcast began throttling upstream P2P services for all users regardless of congestion.

With Canada doing their best to mirror the United States when it comes to telecom regulatory policy (the carriers with the money make the rules), Canadians haven't been very happy lately with Canadian regulatory agency the CRTC. The CRTC, as we've well covered, is stocked with executives from some of Canada's largest ISPs, and as such, has unsurprisingly been engaged in rulemaking that threatens to put smaller independent ISPs out of business.

At the beginning of the summer we noted how Canadian Cable company Cogeco had officially launched a plan to impose caps as low as 10GB per month, with per gigabyte overages as high as $2.50. The problem? Cogeco wasn't able to get their meters to actually work correctly, with inaccurate or conflicting usage amounts being reflected via online Cogeco usage meters and customer e-mail alerts.

Last week Canadian regulatory agency the CRTC once again ruled against independent Canadian ISPs by granting a Bell Canada request to double dip wholesale customers by charging them for up front bandwidth, then charging a new usage-based billing (UBB) charge on the other end. This has been only the latest in a series a rulings that independent ISPs say are aimed to put them out of business.

Last year, Bell Canada started throttling wholesale customer ISPs without telling them, ensuring that these smaller operators couldn't offer an un-throttled connection to consumers that was better than Bell's throttled Sympatico service. As their back up plan against competitors in case regulators stopped them, Bell Canada started devising a usage-based billing (UBB) system smaller Canadian carriers worried could drive them out of business.

Last month we explored how Comcast and Sandvine's network management technology continues to evolve. Unlike Comcast's last system, which throttled upstream traffic for all users regardless of consumption, this new system identifies customers and throttles back consumption only if they're on a congested node -- and they're a particular reason why.

According to user posts in our Bell Canada forum, it appears that Bell Canada is the latest ISP to implement DNS redirection advertising. The technology, controversial to some 'Net purists, replaces the traditional 404 page with an ad-laden search portal (see screenshot) -- effectively giving ISPs a new revenue stream off of mistyped URLs. Comcast was the most recent ISP in the States to implement such functionality, which was originally more controversial because ISPs weren't offering users working opt-out options or "clean" DNS servers.

As users in our Bell Canada forums explore, Bell Canada has decided to lower the caps (and in some cases speeds and select prices) on their DSL services for new users. Bell Canada's "Performance" tier has gone from 7Mbps to 6Mbps and seen its cap reduced from 60GB per month to 25GB per month. Bell Canada's 2Mbps "Essential Plus" tier has seen its cap reduced from 20GB to just 2GB per month. In a particularly curious move, our users note that Bell has also added "Usage Insurance" that provides users additional cap space in forty GB increments (up to 120GB) for an additional $5 per month. Users who don't sign up for this "insurance" will wind up paying between $2 and $2.50 per gigabyte in overage charges.

Earlier this year, Bell Canada decided to start throttling the traffic of wholesale competitors before delivering it to them, and without telling them. While Bell claimed the move was to handle congestion, follow up inquiries showed little to no congestion -- leading to the assumption that Bell simply didn't want any competitors offering DSL service that was superior to their own, throttled DSL service.

Last year, Bell Canada started throttling wholesale customers without telling them. Not only did that prevent independent Canadian ISPs from selling DSL service that was better than Bell Canada's throttled DSL service -- it gave Bell Canada's video store a leg up -- by throttling competing P2P video delivery options (already very limited in Canada). Even that didn't seem to help, as Bell has now announced that they're closing down the unopopular video store as of June 15 -- though they're still offering a limited selection of video on demand offerings. "Funny how Bell must have the infrastructure/bandwidth to handle digital video, but can't keep up 100kB/s @ 7/24 for the DSL they either retail or wholesale," complains one of our users.

Despite similar geographical challenges, Canada has fared a little bit better than the US in terms of broadband penetration. But the Canadian government has recently started mirroring the US regulatory approach to broadband.

Last year, Bell Canada started throttling wholesale customers without telling them, ensuring that smaller ISPs couldn't offer an un-throttled connection to consumers that was better than Bell's throttled Sympatico service. As their back up plan against competitors in case regulators stopped them, Bell Canada started devising a usage-based billing (UBB) system smaller Canadian carriers worry could drive them out of business.

There's no love lost between consumers and the CRTC, the Canadian regulatory agency that thus far has done little to stop Bell Canada's anti-competitive attacks on independent ISPs in the country. Consumers are a little extra annoyed with the agency this week for posting their personal information online.

Last year, Bell Canada started throttling wholesale customers without telling them, ensuring that smaller ISPs couldn't offer an un-throttled connection to consumers that was better than Bell's throttled Sympatico service. As their back up plan against competitors in case regulators stopped them, Bell Canada started devising a usage-based billing (UBB) system smaller Canadian carriers worry could drive them out of business.