Michael Geist - In Case You Missed It: Reflecting on the CRTC's Net Neutrality Hearing

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In case you missed or avoided the CRTC net neutrality hearing, I thought I would post a few reflections (my summaries of the events are available at Day 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , and 7 ; additional coverage NetNeutrality.ca ). While there were some notable anecdotes and quotes (Rogers comment about traffic managing a cure for cancer come to mind), I would point to six key revelations that evolved over the course of the week and a half.

1. The rate of network traffic growth is slowing. This was raised midway through the first week by Professor Odlyzko and was subsequently confirmed by several ISPs. The revelations ran counter to the general sense before the hearings that ISPs cannot keep pace with the rate of growth. In fact, it turns out the opposite is true - reasonable new investment in the networks can address current growth rates.

2. There is a wide variation in the use of traffic management tools with a different approach for pretty much every major ISP. There are those that throttle all the time (Cogeco), during large chunks of the day (Bell), only during congested periods (Shaw), or not at all (Telus, Videotron). There are those that throttle upload only (Rogers) or upload and download (Bell). There are those that use "economic measures" such as bit caps effectively (Videotron) and others that doubt it can be an effective approach on its own (Bell). This points to the fact that granular rules will be difficult, but broader principled tests are essential.

3. The rules for retail and wholesale will be different. The hearing surprisingly included a near-rehearing of the Bell v. CAIP case. Wholesale services were much discussed as the CRTC recognized the potential of independent ISPs to inject ...

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