This certainly isn’t a surprise to regular readers of Broadband Reports, given we’ve been talking about this for the better part of a decade now — but Canadian ISPs aren’t very gentle when it comes to handling P2P traffic. For years we’ve tracked how Canadian cable providers are at the forefront of using caps and traffic throttling to avoid having to invest in infrastructure upgrades. Shaw was one of the first providers to throttle the entire BitTorrent application, and fellow cable operator Rogers has long been playing traffic shaping cat and mouse with “bandwidth hogs.”

Last year, Bell Canada took things to a new level by throttling the P2P bandwidth they delivered to wholesale operators — without telling them about it. Despite the fact this prevents competitors from offering an unthrottled, superior alternative to Bell’s Sympatico service, and it throttles any P2P competitors to Bell’s video store — the CRTC ruled that Bell’s actions were in no way discriminatory.

The CRTC did say they’d be conducting a broader exploration of network neutrality, a concept that really wasn’t discussed much in Canada before the Bell throttling incident. As part of that inquiry, Canadian ISPs have been sharing their network management practices with the CRTC (see filings). Christopher Parsons, a grad student at the University of Victoria, has compiled a fantastic summary of ISP responses to the CRTC (also see his blog).

Rogers, Bell Canada, Shaw and Cogeco all admit to using deep packet inspection technology to slow certain types of Internet traffic. Those carriers admit they’ve been doing so for years in order to protect the network from “excessive” consumption. Telus, MTS Allstream, Saskatchewan Telecom and Primus Telecom definitively claim they do not specifically target P2P traffic. Much of the data filed in confidence with the CRTC and not shared with the public.

(Metered billing) is still not considered an acceptable method given the latency between use and billing (and it) would not dissuade ‘abuses’ of the network. -Cogeco on throttling over metered billing

Page 24 of Parsons’ synopsis is particularly of note — Rogers claiming they utilize DPI throttling to prevent their network from becoming “the world s buffet.” Cogeco admits they started throttling back in 2001 instead of moving to metered billing, which they claim “would not dissuade abuses of the network.”

While many ISPs use some kind of network management to handle congestion, customers often aren’t informed of them. If (as many ISP lobbyists argue) it’s the right of the ISP to manage their network as they see fit — it should equally be the right of the consumer to be clearly informed about how ISP networks differ — allowing the market to reward ISPs that invest in network infrastructure and develop the most intelligent (and least intrusive) network management practices.

But that requires a strong government nudge (as we saw here in the States with Comcast), given these carriers will never be completely forthright with consumers voluntarily — as doing so admits limitations of their networks. The CRTC is expected to have a public hearing this summer further discussing these filings, though it’s not clear if anything will come of it. As in the United States, the revolving door between regulators, incumbent lobbyists and incumbent executives make regulatory objectivity almost impossible, and incumbent favoritism almost guaranteed.

The CRTC’s vice-chairman, Leonard Katz, spent seventeen years working for Rogers and eleven for Bell. Canada’s Telecom Telecommunications Policy Review Panel, tasked with determining regulatory framework, was led by the ex-owner of Inukshuk (sold to Bell/Rogers), an exec that played a huge role in the Bell & Microsoft alliance and a lawyer whose firm represents incumbent operators.

Consumers and independent ISPs are both hoping that the CRTC finally takes some kind of action, though they’re still stunned from the CRTC’s last (in)decision. “Something is very wrong with how the decision went down,” Teksavvy CEO Rocky Gaudrault recently told me. “I really hope those responsible for causing this have their day on owning up to what they’ve done to Internet in Canada,” says Gaudrault.
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