Bell to stop internet throttling

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Bell internet customers will no longer have their file sharing uploads and downloads deliberately slowed down.

Bell internet customers will no longer have their file sharing uploads and downloads deliberately slowed down.

Bell Canada and Bell Aliant will stop using equipment to selectively slow down file sharing applications on their networks starting March 1, the companies said in a letter to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission on Monday.

That will affect both the companies' own retail internet customers and the customers of independent internet service providers who rent wholesale access to Bell's network in order to connect directly with customers' homes.

Bell and Bell Aliant have been selectively slowing down or throttling peer-to-peer file sharing applications of both its retail and wholesale customers between 4:30 p.m. and 2 a.m. – considered peak times when overall internet traffic is highest – since 2008. They said peer-to-peer traffic is targeted because it is not as time sensitive as other applications, such as video or voice calling.

However, "with the increasing popularity of streamed video and other traffic, P2P file-sharing, as a proportion of total traffic, has been diminishing," said a letter signed by Denis E. Henry, Bell Aliant's vice-president of regulatory, government affairs and public law and Philippe Gauvin, counsel for Bell Canada on regulatory law and policy.




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