OTTAWA-GATINEAU – It’ll be hot in Gatineau this July as network neutrality advocates will finally get to face off against the big Canadian ISPs over the corporations’ network traffic management practices.
While the CRTC today announced that it has denied the Canadian Association of Internet Providers’ (CAIP) request that Bell Canada cease the traffic-shaping it has adopted for its wholesale Gateway Access Service (In the future, however, Bell Canada will be required to notify its wholesale customers at least 30 days in advance of making changes that impact on the performance of its Gateway Access Service), the Commission has begun an entirely new procedure into wholesale and retail traffic shaping procedures.
“CAIP’s application asked us to only consider the specific issue of wholesale traffic shaping within a specific context. The broader issue of Internet traffic management raises a number of questions that affect both end-users and service providers,” said CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein in a release. “We have decided to hold a separate proceeding to consider both wholesale and retail issues. Its main purpose will be to address the extent to which Internet service providers can manage the traffic on their networks in accordance with the Telecommunications Act.”
The growing popularity of certain Internet applications, such as online video, leads network congestion if not properly managed by service providers. To deal with this congestion big ISPs manage the flow of traffic on their networks so that, for example, customers using bandwidth-hungry P2P services don’t consume so much bandwidth that it impacts their other customers surfing the web.
Some net neutrality advocates, however, are afraid of ISPs targeting certain applications for slowdown or limiting access to various web sites that might compete with other businesses run by those ISPs.
The ISPs counter that some applications, if not hemmed in somewhat, like P2P, will swallow all available bandwidth if left unchecked, causing web traffic to grind to a halt. As far as limiting access to competitive web sites, ISPs counter that doing such a thing would simply be bad for business and it’s something they wouldn’t do.
The Commission’s assessment of traffic shaping was limited to Bell Canada’s practice of slowing down the transfer rates of peer-to-peer traffic at certain times of the day. Other ISPs perform similar operations or find other ways to make their networks run as smoothly as possible.
“Based on the evidence before us, we found that the measures employed by Bell Canada to manage its network were not discriminatory. Bell Canada applied the same traffic-shaping practices to wholesale customers as it did to its own retail customers,” von Finckenstein said about the Bell case in particular.
So, the Commission has launched a proceeding to examine the current and potential traffic management practices of ISPs operating in Canada. This proceeding will include a public hearing starting on July 6, 2009, in Gatineau, Que.
It has invited comments on a number of specific questions. Some of these questions are related to:
* Changes in bandwidth consumption that may lead to network congestion.
* Internet traffic management practices based on technical solutions or business models that are currently available or may be developed in the future, and
* The impact of such practices on end-users.
* In addition, the Commission will try to establish the criteria to be used in the event that specific traffic management practices need to be authorized.
First comments are due February 16th.
