Canada Authorizes ISP Bandwidth Throttling as "Last Resort"

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on October 21, 2009 - 10:07am.

Ottawa, Canada - Canada's telecom regulator on Wednesday issued new guidelines for Internet service providers in their use of traffic management practices, that include a provision allowing for intentional "throttling" of peer-to-peer traffic as a last result.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) said that ISPs should first rely on "economic measures," such as setting bandwidth caps and imposing fees on customers who exceed their monthly allotments.

"Technical means to manage traffic, such as traffic shaping, should only be employed as a last resort," the CRTC said.

Canadian ISPs did not appear to be critical of the new guidelines.

BCE told Reuters that its existing traffic management practices are already compliant with the new guidelines, while Telus told Reuters it doesn't currently throttle traffic, but does employ some bandwidth caps.

http://snipurl.com/smzdr (Reuters)