OTTAWA – The Canadian Association of Internet Providers (CAIP) says Bell Canada’s response to the CRTC over the organization’s complaints of traffic shaping, or throttling, “confirms that the association’s arguments of wrong-doing by the country’s largest phone company… were well-founded,” reads a press release.
CAIP’s original Part VII Application was filed earlier this month in response to certain traffic shaping measures that Bell Canada is applying to local access and transport services it supplies to competitors on a regulated basis. “Independent competitors interconnect with Bell in order to gain access to their end-user through the ‘final mile’ of access on Bell’s local network. Competitors deliver their own services, including Internet access, VoIP, VPN, etc., over this regulated facility,” reads the release.
Bell has admitted that it is "throttling" traffic between the ISP and end user for ten hours each day. Canada’s other major phone companies have publicly stated they do not shape the traffic of their competitive wholesale clients.
"In our reply we have further demonstrated to the CRTC that Bell’s activity is counter to regulations Bell is obliged to follow under the Telecommunication Act and that the anti-competitive action is having a negative impact on our members and our customers,” said Tom Copeland, chair of CAIP.
Bell executives have maintained that they are throttling, or impeding, only bandwidth-hogging peer-to-peer (P2P) traffic “but tests by CAIP’s members and Internet users at large have upheld CAIP’s argument that other forms of traffic, including VoIP and VPNs, have become collateral damage. This presents significant reliability issues for many Canadian businesses,” reads the release.
“CAIP has noted that coincident with when the traffic shaping began, Bell had announced its retail ‘unlimited’ Internet accounts would be discontinued in favour of usage-based billing. Bell has also undertaken a marketing program advertising its residential high-speed service as a ‘direct, uncongested gateway to the Internet’ using a ‘new, next-generation fibre optic network’ with ‘consistent, super-fast access speeds’,” continues the release.
"If Bell can advertise their service in this manner, while at the same time claiming to suffer from bandwidth congestion, then clearly there is a conflict between their traffic shaping action and reality. We hope the CRTC agrees with the evidence we have presented and returns the market to the state it was at prior to Bell’s implementation of traffic shaping," added Copeland.
"This matter is now squarely in front of the CRTC. The industry is appalled by Bell’s actions. Canadian Internet users are outraged and Canadian businesses are being negatively impacted.”
