Google says Bell Canada is violating Canadian telecommunications law by slowing Internet traffic and is requesting the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) take action against the company.
“Bell claims its throttling of peer-to-peer applications is a reasonable form of network management. Google respectfully disagrees. Network management does not include Canadian carriers’ blocking or degrading lawful applications that consumers wish to use,” Google said in a statement to the CRTC.
Other complaints to the CRTC about Internet throttling have been made by industry associations. The CRTC is investigating the throttling and said it will release a report in the fall.
“From consumer, competition and innovation perspectives, throttling applications that consumers choose is inconsistent with a content and application-neutral Internet, and a violation of Canadian telecommunications law, which forbids unfair discrimination and undue or unreasonable preferences and requires that regulation be technologically and competitively neutral,” Google said.
Bell first started slowing the speeds of its Sympatico Internet subscribers in November and later did the same to its wholesale customers in March. The company claims that the growing number of peer-to-peer users was threatening to lead to slowdowns for its entire customer base.
Google said to protect consumer choice and innovation on the Internet the CRTC should require Bell and other ISPs to end its throttling practices.
“The Internet is simply too important to allow them to act as such a gatekeeper,” Google said. “Protecting end user choice is the central issue in this proceeding, but also a much larger issue. It goes to the heart of the Internet and how it acts as an extraordinary platform for innovation and fair competition.”
Gooogle is also getting a new senior vice president and chief financial officer from Bell Canada. Patrick Pichette was president of operations at the company.
