Federal regulators have ordered Bell Canada to provide tangible evidence that its broadband networks are congested to justify the company's Internet "traffic-shaping" policies.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) yesterday laid out the process through which it will tackle the issue of how Internet providers manage the flow of content on their networks and those they lease to third-party providers, setting up a summer of debate over so-called net neutrality.
In a letter sent yesterday to the Canadian Association of Internet Providers (CAIP) and Bell Canada, the CRTC requested further information from both parties and said it plans to issue a ruling based on CAIP's complaint this fall.
In April, CAIP - an industry group representing about 50 independent Internet service providers - launched a complaint with the CRTC after its member companies discovered that Bell was slowing down the traffic on the network space it was leasing to them.
On Wednesday, the CRTC denied CAIP's request for interim relief, allowing Bell to continue to slow down or "shape" certain types of Internet traffic.
"CAIP looks forward to providing the commission with additional information regarding the impact of traffic shaping on our customers and the other types of applications that our customers have indicated are being negatively impacted," CAIP spokesman Tom Copeland said in a statement.
A spokeswoman for Bell, which is owned by Montreal-based BCE Inc., said the company is looking forward to dealing with the application and "getting the facts out on the table."
Canada's largest ISPs - including Bell and Rogers Communications Inc. - employ shaping techniques to manage the flow of data on their networks.
Shaping involves slowing down certain kinds of Internet activity - usually peer-to-peer traffic used for large file transfers - while giving priority to other data.
The companies say the large files clog their networks, which leads to slow connection speeds for other customers.
Other ISPs in the U.S. and Europe have faced a user backlash from "net neutrality" proponents, who say that traffic shaping violates the unwritten rule that all Internet traffic should be treated equally.
The CRTC has asked Bell to provide "full rationale and evidence" to support its claim that 95 per cent of its users were negatively impacted by peer-to-peer traffic and to describe where congestion is occurring, what other approaches the company considered as alternatives to shaping and to describe in detail its Internet traffic management practices.
Bell said it uses deep-packet inspection - a method of scanning and filtering Internet content - to scan for peer-to-peer traffic as a part of its Internet management strategy, but says that services such as voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) transmission are not affected.
The CRTC has asked Bell to clarify how it avoids shaping VoIP and online streaming traffic while CAIP has been tasked with providing information to support its claim that "all forms of file-sharing service and audio or video streaming services, such as Internet radio and YouTube" are affected by Bell's practices.
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