Bell Canada may continue to throttle p2p for the time being

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission has refused in an urgent procedure to prohibit major carrier Bell Canada from slowing p2p traffic on lines leased to smaller carriers.

Bell Canada has been throttling p2p traffic on its lines since last year, arguing that this is necessary to provide sufficient bandwidth for other traffic. A few months ago, Bell expanded this practice to lines leased to smaller carriers. They were very indignant about this, because they could no longer keep the promise of unlimited access to their customers. They also suspected that Bell had implemented the measure to make competition in p2p traffic impossible.

The Canadian Association of Internet Providers has therefore asked the regulator CRTC to immediately prohibit Bell Canada from delaying p2p traffic any longer. The CRTC judged Wednesday that the matter is not urgent enough for an urgent procedure. According to the committee, the providers have not sufficiently demonstrated that they suffer ‘irreparable damage’ from Bell’s practices. Should the throttling of p2p traffic turn out to be illegal, the providers can always receive compensation from Bell.

The decision does not mean that the CTRC approves of slowing p2p traffic, but only that the matter is not urgent enough for an urgent procedure. In a normal procedure, which will undoubtedly come, Bell’s conduct can still be found to be unlawful.