Net Neutrality Perfect Storm, eh! – Updated

For some time, net neutrality has been below the radar for most Canadians. Sure, we’ve read about what’s going on in the US, but many of the regulations governing internet backbones and content delivery are different up here. For example, Canadian law charges a piracy tax on writeable media such as CDs, to offset piracy.

In the past couple of weeks we’ve seen a perfect storm brewing regarding net neutrality in our home and native land. Here’s a quick breakdown…

Bell Canada is required to sell DSL lines wholesale to resellers at a regulated price, as dictated by the CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission). In turn, the 3rd party resellers set their own prices for end users, based on their own administrative policies. One reseller would, for example, offer a flat monthly rate, but the end user could opt between unlimited bandwidth with a 15 millisecond delay per packet, or 200GB with no delay. Another reseller could offer varying rates based on usage.

In the past couple of weeks, Bell announced it would be doing packet-shaping not only for it’s own Sympatico DSL subscribers, but also on the wholesale level. By early to mid April, DSL subscribers in Canada will see a major slowdown in any torrent activity, regardless of their provider.

What makes this more interesting is the recent announcement by the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) to distribute Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister via bit torrent, using mininova.org to announce. Many people who have tried to download Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister have already reported issues with speed, because of Bell’s new packet shaping policy. The CBC is a gov’t funded broadcaster, and one of it’s mandates is to deliver content to Canadians in the most efficient manner possible. Bell Canada is interfering with the CBC’s ability to get content to Canadian citizens.

What makes this an even stickier wicket for Bell is that they also run Canada’s largest satellite television company, Bell Express Vu. This sets up another conflict of interest between a private sector broadcaster, and tax dollar supported programming.

This isn’t just about broadcasters though. Bit torrent is a technology that IS largely used for pirating TV shows. To deny that would be to deny reality. At the same time it’s also used by millions to legally distribute open source software such as Linux and Open Office, game demos, and a large number of audio and video podcasts.

I suspect that there’s a storm abrewing.

UPDATE: I came across this info from the DSL Reports forum, posted by 3rd party DSL provider TekSavvy. It illustrates the effect Bell’s throttling is having on customers. Apparently it’s affecting more than just P2P.  It’s worth pointing out that the charts below represent a stacked chart.

Here are the charts… hit the link to see them full size.

before throttling and…

The charts also show another factual ‘misrepresentation’ that we hear from not only from Bell Sympatico, but from most major carriers in North America.  That P2P is eating up the bandwidth.  When looking at the stacked chart, it’s clear that Web traffic combined with streaming is double that of P2P traffic.  Here’s an excerpt from packet shaping company Ellacoya’s June 2007 “Media Alert” pdf released during the NXTComm Show in Chicago…

After more than four years during which peer-to-peer (P2P) applications have overwhelmingly consumed
the largest percentage of bandwidth on the network, HTTP (Web) traffic has overtaken P2P and continues
to grow. Presently, as a result of streaming audio and video in Web downloads, HTTP is approximately
46% of all traffic on the network. P2P continues as a strong second place at 37% of total traffic.
Newsgroups (9%), non-HTTP video streaming (3%), gaming (2%) and VoIP (1%) are the next widely used
applications.

Breaking down application types within HTTP, the data reveals that traditional Web page downloads (i.e.
text and images) represent 45% of all Web traffic. Streaming video represents 36% and streaming audio
5% of all HTTP traffic. YouTube alone comprises approximately 20% of all HTTP traffic, or nearly 10% of
all traffic on the Internet.

It should also be pointed out that Bell (through it’s BCE Capital division) became a major investor of Ellacoya.  This isn’t to say that there’s anything wrong with Ellacoya, or Bell investing in them.  By throttling streaming media and web services of 3rd party suppliers, Bell is making their own services more appealing.