Canada is the first country to rule on the controversial topic of Internet neutrality, according to the CRTC, although the debate rages on south of the border and around the globe (see story, p. 17).

As previously reported, the CRTC late last year laid down some guidelines for Internet service providers that allow the controversial practice of throttling only as ‘a last resort.’

ISPs will be required to inform customers at least 30 days before a traffic management practice takes effect, and must describe how the practice will affect their customers’ service. Wholesale customers must be given at least 60 days notice.

‘Technical means to manage traffic, such as traffic shaping, should only be employed as a last resort,’ said CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein in the ruling, adding that ISPs should favor ‘economic measures.’

During the round of hearings in 2009, telephone and cable companies were often at odds with content creators, Internet activists and other stakeholders such as Google Canada.

ISPs maintained that throttling is necessary to keep Internet traffic moving. During the hearings, both Rogers and Shaw Communications executives said they used deep-packet inspection to slow down peer-to-peer traffic, but only on the ‘upstream.’ Rogers throttles traffic 24/7, while Shaw says it only does it when the network is busy.

Videotron doesn’t throttle P2P traffic for uploading or downloading. It uses an economic, not technological, solution by charging customers more money for more gigabytes on the upstream. Rogers and Shaw don’t. Bell is the only company in Canada that throttles on both the upstream and the downstream. Cogeco traffic manages on the upstream only and Telus uses no Internet traffic shaping application at all, at least not yet.

Stephen Waddell – ACTRA’s national executive director – wishes the CRTC had been even tougher in its anti-throttling posture. ‘The net should be free,’ Waddell told Playback recently. ‘We’re not really happy that the CRTC didn’t take more substantial action with respect to the throttling issues.’

With files from Norma Reveler and Suzan Ayscough