Google joins in Bell Canada traffic throttling war
p2pnet news Freedom | P2P:- Google is the latest company to line up against Bell Canada in the Bell versus its own Customers wars.
It’s, “breaking Canadian telecommunications law by slowing certain internet traffic,” says Google in a CBC story.
Bell is accusing P2P file sharers of hogging bandwidth and with that as an excuse, is trying to to impose traffic shaping as a standard practise, and block net neutrality.
Now Do No Evil is, “urging the CRTC to take action against the company,” says the CBC, quoting Google as saying in a 15-page submission to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission:
“Bell claims its throttling of peer-to-peer applications is a reasonable form of network management.”
But, “Network management does not include Canadian carriers’ blocking or degrading lawful applications that consumers wish to use,” it wrote, going on >>>
From consumer, competition and innovation perspectives, throttling applications that consumers choose is inconsistent with a content and application-neutral internet, and a violation of Canadian telecommunications law, which forbids unfair discrimination and undue or unreasonable preferences and requires that regulation be technologically and competitively neutral.
The Net is, “simply too important to allow them to act as such a gatekeeper,” says Google, echoing complaints by others, including the CIPPIC and CAIP, two Canadian organisations which are pushing for the CRTC to order Bell to Cease and Desist.
Bell Canada’s traffic shaping poses serious risks to Canada’s public interests in maintaining the Net as an open vehicle for free expression and technical innovation, says the Campaign for Democratic Media (CDM), p2pnet posted recently, continuing >>>
It [CDM] also protests the use of Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology which, it says, undermines the Telecom Policy Objective of Protecting the Privacy of Persons.
“The internet’s power to facilitate social, democratic and economic progress is inseparable from its equal treatment of all content that travels over its pathways,” it says in a submission to the CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) in support of the Canadian Alliance of Internet Service Provider’s (CAIP) application to force Bell to cease and desist from its throttling of P2P internet traffic.”
Rogers, embroiled in another massive consumer uprising, this time centering on its determination to con would-be iPhone buyers into signing three-year contracts, “disputed claims by CAIP that such throttling affects services such as voice over internet protocol (VoIP) and virtual private networks (VPN),” says the CBC.
“This equipment, therefore, does not impact any other traffic such as VoIP, VPN and other online streaming applications because their signatures are different,” the story has Ken Engelhart, senior vice-president of regulatory affairs for Rogers, stating:
“There is therefore no reason why VPN or other encrypted traffic would be affected.”
Engelhart, “also reiterated that Rogers does not throttle the downloading of files over peer-to-peer applications – it only slows uploading”.
Oh.
But, “because the download speeds of many applications are tied to the upload speed, the downloads are effectively slowed as well, which is the fault of the application’s provider.”
Oh.
“Of course, because some P2P applications (BitTorrent for example) restrict download speed to the maximum upload speed provided by the user, a customer’s P2P download speed can be limited by the upstream cap, but that is a result of the business decision taken by the P2P applications provider,” he wrote , says the CBC, adding:
“Aside from Google and Skype, parties who have made CRTC submissions supporting CAIP include: the University of Western Ontario; the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic; the Union des consommateurs; Primus Telecommunications Canada Inc.; the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association; and the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance, which counts network equipment maker Alcatel Lucent among its members.”
The CRTC, “expects to rule on the CAIP-Bell dispute in September and has said a larger investigation into net neutrality principles is likely”.
Bell is to respond in its next submission to the CRTC, due on Thursday.
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.Stumble It!
Bell versus its own Customers – p2pnet traffic shaping digest, April 19, 2008
CBC – Bell’s internet throttling illegal, Google says, July 7, 2008
p2pnet – CDM calls for probe on P2P throttling, July 4, 2008
massive consumer uprising – Canadian Apple fans lust after the iPhone, July 8, 2008
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July 9th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
But, “because the download speeds of many applications are tied to the upload speed, the downloads are effectively slowed as well, which is the fault of the application’s provider.”
The application is supposed to fabricate the data that hasn’t been uploaded yet in order to make the download speed faster than the upload speed? If it could do that, the network wouldn’t be needed at all.
Earth to Ken Engelhart: You are a disingenuous moron.
SRG