Michael Geist

Bell filed its response to the CAIP submission to the CRTC on its throttling practices yesterday, unsurprisingly arguing that its actions are justified and that there is no need to deal with the issue on an emergency basis.  Several points stand out from the submission including its non-response to the privacy concerns with deep-packet inspection (it merely says that it does not retain or use the data, but does not deny collecting what could easily be interpreted as personally identifiable information) and its inference that P2P usage could be deemed using a connection as a "server" and therefore outside the boundaries of "fair and proportionate use" under typical ISP terms of use.

Most importantly, however, Bell provides data on its network usage that significantly undermines its claim that P2P usage is causing such havoc with its network that throttling measures that impact 100 percent of its (and some of its competitions') users are needed.  Bell again reiterates that the "problem" lies with 5 percent of its users that are heavy P2P users.  Yet that 5 percent apparently uses 33 percent of available bandwidth during peak periods.  That is a disproportionate use to be sure, yet it struck me as far lower than might have been expected. 

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