Bell advised
the CRTC yesterday that it plans to drop all peer-to-peer traffic
shaping (often called throttling) as of March 1, 2012. While the
decision has been described as surprising
or as quid
pro quo for the usage based billing ruling, I think it is neither
of those. The writing was on the wall in October when Bell announced
that it was dropping the traffic shaping for wholesale traffic, citing
reduced network congestion from P2P. At the time I wrote that the Bell
move:
raises the prospect that Bell's
current throttling practices may now violate the CRTC's Internet
traffic management guidelines. While Bell says its congestion has been
reduced, its retail throttling practices have remained unchanged,
throttling P2P applications from 4:30 pm to 2:00 am. Given the
decline
in congestion, a CRTC complaint might ask whether the current
throttling policy "results in discrimination or preference as little as
reasonably possible" and ask for explanation why its data cap policies
"would not reasonably address the need and effectively achieve the same
purpose as the ITMP."
The CRTC Internet
traffic management practice policy,
often referred to as the net neutrality rules, make it clear that the
Commission prefers network investment and "economic ITMPs" (ie. usage
charges) to traffic shaping. The Bell
letter
to the CRTC addresses this directly, citing its network investment, the
use of economic ITMPs, and declining P2P file sharing as a proportion
of network traffic as the reason for the change. Given the CRTC rules,
Bell had little choice but to drop traffic shaping since it was
increasingly difficult to justify given network and marketplace
developments.
The big question is now how much longer Rogers will maintain its throttling
practices. Most of the larger Canadian ISPs no longer traffic shape
(Cogeco seems to have quietly
dropped it after maintaining just two years ago that it had no
other alternative),
leaving Rogers as the outlier. Moreover, the company is currently
facing an enforcement action for violating the CRTC ITMP rules with
respect to the impact its throttling practices have had on online
gaming. The company might try hold out for awhile, but given the
network congestion profile in Canada and CRTC pressure to address
its net neutrality violations, it seems likely that it will follow
Bell's lead or face
further complaints that its practices do not comply with CRTC policy.
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