P2P Throttling Comes to Canada

Comcast has admitted to putting an electronic govenner on their subscribers using P2P tools and we can now add Canada’s Bell Sympatico to that list…

"[W]e are now using a Internet Traffic Management to restrict accounts that are using a large portion of bandwidth during peak hours," a Sympatico forum administrator wrote in response to a user complaint. The forum administrator also provides a list of affected applications, which includes BitTorrent, Gnutella, Limewire, Kazaa, and other widely-used P2P applications. Readers of Broadband Reports had been suspicious for some time that the ISP was throttling traffic.

"Bell Sympatico has launched a solution to enhance the online customer experience and improve Internet performance for all our customers during peak periods of Internet usage with the introduction of Internet Traffic Management," another response says. "There continues to be phenomenal growth of consumer Internet traffic throughout the world, and Bell is using Internet Traffic Management to ensure we deliver bandwidth fairly to our customers during peak Internet usage."

P2P is thought to make up between 30 and 50 percent of all Internet traffic. Many consumers who pay more for faster Internet connectivity do so because they want faster P2P service. The increasing number of foreign and domestic Internet service providers that use bandwidth throttling is sure to provide ammunition to those who believe some sort of government intervention will be necessary to ensure that broadband subscribers have full and unfettered access to any application, any site, any time. Source: BitTorrent blocking goes north: Canadian ISP admits to throttling P2P

I’ve been of two minds on this issue.  For cable broadband subscribers where our bandwidth is shared among people on the same node, one big draw can effect lots of other people.  Now for DSL, that isn’t the case.  So, is it the responsibly of a provider to maintain a certain QOS for all?  But as the ArsTechnica article points out what about those of us who pay for extra bandwidth?  I paid for extra speed so I can download and upload faster as well as have better quality Skype calls.

As I’ve read more about this and have come down on the side of throttling is just bad business.  If I pay for more speed, I want the speed.  What the ISPs need to do, IMHO, is use more intelligent routing to make sure everyone has a decent experience but not at the cost of people who are leveraging new technologies.

Yes, Skype is a threat to telcos, but frankly they have to accept that as mobile, international tech people … we leverage power tools to stay connected.

So Shaw, Telus, and Rogers … but on notice we won’t be amused if you follow Bell’s lead.

BTW Heri, as always, has sage words on this as well.