CRTC, Rogers face net neutrality complaint with Ontario government

The CRTC and Rogers Communications Inc. on Monday became targets of a complaint about Internet throttling practices from a new advocacy group representing online videogame fans. In complaints filed with the Ontario Ministry of Consumer and Business Services and the CRTC's Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services (CCTS), a group calling itself the Canadian Gamers Organization said Rogers’ may have violated the Ontario Consumer Protection Act by not fully disclosing its “use, limitations and affects” of Internet traffic-shaping practices. The group also complained that the commission may be in violation of the same provincial law for failing to enforce full disclosure of throttling practices, according to a copy of the complaint posted by Jason Koblovsky, the group’s founder, on online social forum Yuku. The complaint stems from a section of the provincial Consumer Protection Act that requires companies to provide “a fair and accurate description of the goods and services proposed to be supplied to the consumer, including the technical requirements, if any, related to the use of the goods or services.” Rogers has acknowledged that its traffic-shaping practices may slow down the connections of online users playing the popular World of Warcraft videogame, but the complaint says that recent tests performed by the advocacy group’s founder have produced evidence that Rogers’ throttling methods affected at least one other game played online on the Sony Playstation. Rogers' website discloses that it uses throttling practices to limit spam, viruses and other security threats and to shape traffic on peer-to-peer file-sharing applications. Koblovsky wrote that the commission’s 2009 policy of relying on consumer complaints to drive throttling investigations violates consumer protection law because most Internet users lack the technical knowledge to determine whether their traffic is subjected to throttling. The complaint against the CRTC’s enforcement mechanism follows the release of documents this summer that led some critics to suggest the commission is not taking effective action against unfair traffic-shaping practices. Michael Geist, the Canada research chair of Internet and e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa, posted CRTC documents and complaints on his blog in July and said that the commission was not investigating traffic complaints effectively. Rogers told the Huffington Post Tuesday that its traffic shaping on the Playstation network is based on the amount of peer-to-peer file-sharing traffic going through the system at any point in time. "Everyone is using the Internet more and more for entertainment, information and communications. We need to have the ability to carry all of the traffic at any one time. It's about usage and usage patterns. That's what we have to anticipate, build for and continue to invest in. Rogers only manages upload traffic for P2P file sharing," Rogers said. "We are in full compliance with Consumer Protection legislation, the Telecommunications Act and the CRTC regulations. That is why the CRTC investigations have not resulted in any findings that we are out of compliance." news@thewirereport.ca

CRTC, Rogers face net neutrality complaint with Ontario government

News | August 23, 2011

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