CRTC ruling a blow to net neutrality advocates

[hugh]

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) today announced that it has denied the Canadian Association of Internet Providers’ (CAIP) application to end Bell Canada's practice of "throttling" its wholesale internet services.

This is the most bizarre decision I have read. The CRTC has totally ignored the whole practice of throttling particular types of content and applications by saying we'll talk about it at a later date!

FWIW, I don't have a problem with bandwidth throttling provided its done in a "neutral fashion" I appreciate that its uneconomical to have unlimited capacity and networks get congested but picking and choosing which types of data and content can get through is discriminatory.

[smootherator]

Proving once again the CRTC is only setup to protect the big corporations and could really care less about the consumers.

[hugh]

Well I certainly don't believe that was why the CRTC was setup but regardless lets stick to the topic at hand please.

[Barney Rubble]

What a joke...as usual the big guy almost always win....

Bell is bloody lucky I am not PM or else it would be a Crown corporation and it would not be by buying them out with tax dollars either if you know what I mean..

[99gecko]

Well it appears the CRTC's definition of neutral was applied in the scope of wholesale vs. retail, which was within the context of the original complaint by CAIP.

Many people are going to think that this was a ruling against P2P advocates; which it was not. How Bell defends it's network management will be their biggest challenge in the proceedings next summer.

Personally, I am disappointed by this decision, but I didn't expect much to come from it anyway.

[hugh]

Well it appears the CRTC's definition of neutral was applied in the scope of wholesale vs. retail, which was within the context of the original complaint by CAIP.

And I think you will agree that avoiding the whole neutrality issue was like Canute trying to hold back the tide!

It's like saying it's okay to discriminate against Muslims so long as you also discriminate against Jews.

[mwickens]

Originally Posted by hugh

picking and choosing which types of data and content can get through is discriminatory

"Discrimination" is not always bad. And we can argue about whether this particular case of it is, but regardless, it should not be outlawed. No provider or consumer of content has a right for it to be delivered at a certain speed. ISPs should be free to set their terms for service. If you disagree, go to another provider. If no provider offers what you want, well, no one has a right to internet access, either. (Of course, telecommunications should also be deregulated so that its not the domain of just a few companies, but that's another topic.)

[urbanlegend]

Originally Posted by mwickens

If you disagree, go to another provider.

my take on the problem with the crtc decision is that people (such as myself) were disagreeing with what bell was doing and were going to another provider. bell was stifling this competition by choking the bandwidth the re-sellers purchased. the re-sellers were trying to use the bandwidth they purchased legitimately from bell to differentiate their service. of course, bell didn't like this and choked the re-sellers too.

also, from what i read at dslreports, there is no evidence that bell's network is congested or that it is congested with p2p traffic. some alleged evidence was submitted to the crtc but was not made public, so we'll likely never know.

in my opinion, if bell is having congestion problems and they need to shape bandwidth, they should do it across the board, regardless of the type of content or the protocol being used. they should slow down someone downloading from bell's online services the same as someone using bittorrent.

john

[springle]

The CRTC is made up of "Staff" and "Commissioners". The Staff is made up of technical people, usually recruited from the industries being regulated. However, effort is made to ensure that the Staff working on issues associated with a particular company did not work for that company in the past.

Most Public Notices are initiated by the CRTC, but can be requested by others. Generally, the CRTC will carefully define the boundaries of the issue under consideration. They do not allow evidence associated with issues outside these boundaries.

Usually the CRTC will determine the Parties involved in a particular PN. Others can take part as Interested Parties - even members of the public at large.

The PN sets the process and links events to dates. Generally, the Parties are issued Interrogatories by the CRTC. These are basically questions and the responses become evidence. However, the Parties can claim Confidentiality for its responses to the Interrogatories and the Public can not see this evidence if the CRTC agrees with the Confidentiality claim. If you become an Interested Party, you also can issue Interrogatories to the Parties.

Lawyers are heavily involved in the process. At one time Telus employed about 100 lawyers to work on regulatory issues.

The politically appointed Commissioners are not active participants in the process until it is over. The Staff summarizes the evidence and makes a recommendation to the Commissioners.

The Commissioners meet and come to a Decision, which usually coincides with the recommendations of the Staff. This doesn't always occur. I have been told of occasions when the Staff had to go back and reverse their proposed Decision, and creating new reasons for the reversal. Occasionally the Commissioners can not come to a common agreement and the dissenting Commissioners usually prepare a dissenting point of view which is attached to the Decision.

Decisions will also outline future PNs or processes.

Bias does enter into the workings occasionally. For example, there was an employee of Bell Canada who felt he had been overlooked for a promotion. He quit and went to work for the CRTC. He grabbed every opportunity that came his way to stick it to his former employers. This story was told to me by Bell employees who feared working with this CRTC staff member.

I'm not going to review this particular Decision, but admit it makes me feel uncomfortable. The Commission generally does not like resellers as they are economically inefficient. They would encourage ISPs to build their own connections to the WWW and enter into their own Peering Arrangements.

I would encourage any Forum viewers who do feel aggrieved, to pariticipate in future PNs related to this issue. Become an Interested Party and offer up your arguments directly and not whine about the Decisions here after having bypassed your opportunity to participate directly.