Archived from groups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip,microsoft.public.windowsnt.protocol.tcpip (
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In article <DvLBd.57525$nV.1700642@news20.bellglobal.com>,
Joe <nospam@nowhere.com> wrote:
:I will skip quoting some of your comments, and will go straight to what my
roblem with Bell was (and probably is for may average DSL users and
roviders in Ontario and Quebec). It appears that the smaller providers of
SL in those provinces have to ask - and wait for- Bell to connect their new
:users. Bell has to do some kind of switching, which I don't know what
:involves, but it takes about a week at best.
I don't know about the more rural areas, but turning up a DSL user is
a "round toit" around here -- something that only takes a few minutes
once they get around to it. The other part of the equation is that
MTS sometimes sends someone out to test the wires in older areas, to
ensure that they are up to grade. When I moved 2 years ago, they didn't
have to do anything special for the DSL -- the DSL attribute was
associated with the phone number, so DSL becomae active as soon as the
phone number was moved.
:If Bell doesn't do that, the
:users doesn't get DSL, and the alternative provider looks like the negligent
:and the incompetent one. Because Bell just wouldn't connect me, I decided to
:make them my DSL provider, and then I finally got connected.
Complain to the CRTC.
:The whole
rdeal took over a month. At some point a Bell technician came to my place
:and admitted that Bell does -purposely- make life miserable for those
:emerging ISPs, which I suppose operate like long distance calling card
roviders, who buy bulk phone time from Bell, and resell it cheaper. Those
:smaller providers are -at seems- at the same time Bell's customers and
:competitors.
I didn't follow how it happened with Bell, but here with MTS,
MTS entered into an agreement with the CRTC whereby MTS was required
to seperate their ISP business from their data line provision business,
forbidden to cross-subsidize the two, and was required to sell data
lines to its competitors under the same tarrifs that they sold
the lines to their internal ISP business. They might still win on
because of economy of scale, but they also have higher overheads
and competitors might be willing to accept lower profit margins,
so it is not enough to put a lock on the market. But it didn't really
matter in the long run as they bought out all the resellers anyhow.
There are, as I recall, at least 3 alternative DSL providers available
here. The difference is that they get MTS to install a distinct wire
instead of going through the MTS dialtone service like the resellers
you reference do. The wire is logically terminated at the DSL
provider's equipment rather than at the MTS Central Office (CO)'s
DSL equipment, so though the bits flow through copper that was
originally installed by MTS, the long haul, interconnects, AUPs
and so on have nothing to do with MTS.
>
:My experience above is a small example of alternative services and products
:which depend -for their existence- on infrastructure and resources that may
:be -or are rapidly being- monopolized.
The alternative market here is expanding in providers, not contracting.
The alternatives just aren't publically marketted for residential
service [though they may offer residential pricing]. If you pay
business-class rates, you get business-class features, like rights
to host servers, rights to email directly out, static IPs, and so on.
The problem probably isn't lack of alternatives: the problem is that you
don't want to pay for the alternatives.
:Yes, we still have choices (for now). But my apocalyptic
:visions of a future where monopolies control everything and everyone is out
f topic.
Chapters/Indigo came here. Some of the smaller bookstores went out
of business; some have stayed pretty much the same. Interestingly,
several of the second-hand bookstores have expanded and are busier
than ever.
One store looked ahead, saw the writing on the wall, pre-emptively
built a large store, concentrated on really keeping up with the
local literary and music community -- and has been successful enough
to expand into four other cities (including New York), and winning
Canadian Bookseller of the Year the last 3 years running. Their prices
are a bit higher but people go out of their way to shop there anyhow,
because the store knows how to give the customer what the customer wants.
Which, in the case of book-lovers, usually *isn't* the New York Times
Top 10 list at 40% off cover price, but rather a plethora of ideas
and a sense of belonging to a community of letters.
Pseudo-onopolies survive to the extent that people find them "good
enough". MacDonalds is *far* more market-savy than Bell Canada, and
yet there are a record number of restaurants in Winnipeg now --
supported by people who are willing to put their money where their mouth is.
:I wrote another message before -in this same thread- asking some questions
:regarding the configuration of an SMTP server. Any suggestions about that?
No, Vern covered that well enough. If you are trying to email to
random locations, there is little you can do on your smtp server
to help you out, as those random systems are only going to be
listening on tcp 25. Like Vern said, if you want to get around the
filter, you'll have to have a relay system on the far side of the blockage,
unless you can get the ISP to remove the block for you. If
Bell Sympatico is like MTS, then the simplest way to get the block
removed is to upgrade to a SOHO business account: MTS will remove
the smtp filter for business accounts without questions, but they
sometimes have to be argued into it for residential accounts.
--
Look out, there are llamas!
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