Cdn traffic management hearings to start Monday

03.07.2009
Canada's telcommunications regulator will start hearings Monday into whether it should or can impose rules on Internet service providers who are fighting online congestion with traffic management.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) will hold six days of hearings on the practices of some of the biggest operators in the country, including telco Bell Canada, and cablecos Shaw Communications and Rogers Communications.

It's an issue that touches the hot buttons of government regulation of the private sector, competition between operators and smaller Internet service providers (ISPs) they sell connectivity to, privacy, the right of customers to get promised online speeds, freedom of speech and what's been dubbed 'net neutrality' --the desirability to keep providers from using traffic management to favour their businesses.

The main Internet wholesalers are "a bunch of bullies in the marketplace trying to impose their will to keep very high, greedy margins," says Rocky Gaudrault, CEO of TekSavvy Solutions, an Ontario-based.ISP that buys connectivity from Bell whose investigation led to the hearings.

After some subscribers complained of slow online speeds, an association of Internet providers complained to the CRTC that Bell Canada's traffic-shaping strategy was discriminatory. The commission dismissed the complaint in November, but decided to hold a hearing because the case raised broad issues.

Providers who do traffic management insist it reduces Web congestion caused by subscribers using peer-to-peer file sharing applications to upload bandwidth-clogging videos and music.