Tag Archives: Internet traffic

| Business, In the news, Technology

Bell wins throttling case

Bell Canada has won a case that went to the CRTC about peer-to-peer throttling.

In April, the Canadian Association of Internet Providers complained to the CRTC because Bell was using traffic shaping techniques to slow P2P traffic on both its network and the networks of DSL Internet resellers (because of Bell’s telephone monopoly, it is required to sell wholesale net access to companies at government-set rates).

The CAIP argued that this was unfair and unnecessary. Bell argued the opposite.

The CRTC took Bell’s side on the case, in a decision which is pretty well uninteresting otherwise. The only caveat: Bell will have to inform its resellers at least 30 days in advance of similar changes in the future.

Despite the apparentloss to net neutrality advocates, Michael Geist says it’s not the last word on the subject, and there’s still hope.

UPDATE: Geist has some quick reactions from Bell and the CRTC.

| In the news, Technology

Networks need investment, so invest

An industry-funded study has “shown” that the Internet faces “brownouts” or bandwidth saturation as early as 2010, if Internet service providers don’t improve the “last mile” of their networks, spending billions of dollars installing fibre-optic cable to replace coaxial cable and twin-wire phone lines.

So, uhh, why don’t they just do that then?

I’m not going to be all Huffington Post about this and suggest it’s a big conspiracy to control what we see on the Internet, but you have to admit the timing of an industry-funded survey that pulls figures out of its ass is kind of suspicious.

We’ll see in the coming weeks if industry leaders propose “innovative solutions” to this problem.