Canada Holds Hearings On ISP Throttling - After failing to protect smaller ISPs from Bell CanadaAfter failing to protect smaller ISPs from Bell Canada 01:57PM Tuesday Jul 07 2009 by Karl Bode tags: legal · competition · business · bandwidth · Politics · world · networking · Bell Sympatico · TekSavvy Solutions Inc. Tipped by cabana Earlier this year, Bell Canada decided to start throttling the traffic of wholesale competitors before delivering it to them, and without telling them. While Bell claimed the move was to handle congestion, follow up inquiries showed little to no congestion -- leading to the assumption that Bell simply didn't want any competitors offering DSL service that was superior to their own, throttled DSL service. Canadian regulators, mirroring the incumbent-friendly policies of their neighbors to the south, decided to do nothing to help smaller ISPs -- though the CRTC did promise a public hearing to discuss the issue further. That hearing started this week, and users in our Canadian broadband forums (see threads here and here) are discussing the event. Those interested can listen to a live audio stream here. Canadian law professor Michael Geist also has a good breakdown of day one, which saw testimony from Juniper networks, Sandvine, and Canadian consumer advocacy groups.
|