CRTC OKs throttling by ISPs

UPDATE: Michael Geist says it’s not all bad.

The CRTC says it’s OK for ISPs to use traffic-shaping as long as they inform customers about it. Because what could go wrong with that? I’ll just point you again to my column on net neutrality at Maisonneuve.

In a decision released Tuesday, the CRTC said retail customers must be told in advance what means are being used to control Internet traffic, and how it will affect their service.

When the big telecom companies sell their services to smaller Internet providers who piggyback off their networks, there must be no competitive discrimination, the CRTC said.

Traffic shaping involves slowing down or “throttling” some kinds of Internet traffic – usually downloads – using a process that is similar to allocating certain lanes on a highway to slow-moving trucks to ease the flow of traffic in other lanes.

Is it time to dissolve the CRTC?

Dissolve the CRTC wants the current commission scrapped in favour of “a new commission, one that will listen to the public and include us in the decision process. A commission that will look at new business models and be able to recognize the importance for Canadian creators and draw the international audience to our market.”

So far the petition has three thousand signatures. The CBC reports it grew out of the CRTC’s decision to allow Bell to change the way it charges customers.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission last week provisionally approved Bell’s request to require independent companies such as TekSavvy and Acanac, which rent parts of its network to supply their own services, to charge customers by how much they download.

Independent providers typically offer customers hundreds of gigabytes of usage where Bell’s most popular service allows only 50 gigabytes a month.

Smaller providers now say they have just under three months to migrate their customers on to similar usage models. Once those plans are implemented, they say, their services will be indistinguishable from Bell’s.

(Via Michael Geist.)