Bell's internet throttling is like reading people's mail, ISPs say

The CBC has an article about the Canadian Association of Internet Provider's final submission to the CRTC in the Bell throttling issue: WN is not part of CAIP, because it costs money to join. However, we support much of their work and are pretty well in the same boat.

"Bell Canada Inc.'s slowing of internet speeds is the equivalent of the post office opening people's mail and deciding when they should get their letters, a group of small service providers have said in their final volley at the company.

The Canadian Association of Internet Providers, a group of 55 companies that rent portions of Bell's network to provide their own broadband services, made its last plea Wednesday to regulators to force Bell to end its speed throttling.

In November Bell started using deep packet inspection (DPI) technology to identify what its customers were using their internet connections for, then started slowing peer-to-peer (P2P) applications such as BitTorrent.

The company extended the practice to CAIP members in March, which prompted the group's complaint to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission in April.

In its submission on Wednesday, CAIP said Bell's defence for throttling — that the company is only slowing P2P downloads, which still get to the user "eventually" — is discriminatory and anti-competitive."


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