Bell Canada's peer-to-peer throttling mess
Bell Canada, the largest Internet service provider for our neighbors to the north, has admitted to using "deep packet sniffers" [Ed's note: Sounds intriguing, am assigning Melissa to look into these people] to throttle peer-to-peer protocol transfers such as BitTorrent downloads. Executives there obviously hadn't spoken to peers at national broadcaster CBC, which recently started legitimately distributing shows via P2P, as has American network NBC and musicians like Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. The company also throttled traffic from ISPs that buy bandwidth wholesale from the company. Net neutrality groups are lobbying Canadian officials to regulate Bell Canada into submission. But Minister of Industry Jim Prentice is opposed to any further regulation, and the Conservative Party-led government has been in favor or easing current regulations on telcos. Meanwhile, here in the states, Comcast has cozied up to BitTorrent and the FCC has proven more amenable to arguments in favor of net neutrality.