Lower CRTC latency standards, say large telecoms, northern gov’ts

An application by BCE Inc.’s Northwestel arguing the CRTC’s basic service standards are impossible to meet in the North is finding support from telecoms and the governments of Yukon and Northwest Territories. The NWT government said in its intervention that it is “particularly concerned that the establishment of unattainable latency targets will result in Northern stakeholders being placed at an automatic disadvantage in applying for and receiving funding.” The CRTC set basic service standards for latency and packet loss in July, which specified internet service providers must provide a service with a latency of 50 milliseconds (ms) -- the lower the better -- between a customer’s modem and an internet exchange point (IXP) in a major Canadian city, and have less than 0.25 per cent packet loss. But Northwestel, which services the Northwest Territories, the Yukon and Nunavut, filed a review-and-vary application in August, arguing that the latency standards are unattainable in the North, due to the long distances in its coverage area, and the physics of the speed of light. The various interventions in favour of Northwestel said the CRTC should lower its standard to 100 ms, 150 ms, or a range in between. In its filing, Xplornet Communications Inc. agreed that when “it comes to latency in rural and remote areas, the sheer distance between the customer and IXP necessitates greater travel time for traffic.” In some cases it makes sense to use technology other than fibre, such as microwave links, to provide services, even though microwave transport isn’t the lowest-latency option, it added. The CRTC shouldn’t rely on “urban-centric evidence, as establishing a definition that is based on urban serving conditions would do a disservice to Canadians who chose to live outside of Canada’s largest cities by failing to recognize the benefits of other technologies that are best fit for delivering a high-quality experience to consumers in rural areas.” Telus Corp. backed up Northwestel in its argument that it's not reasonable to expect latency to decline at the same rate as broadband speeds go up, which are increasing every year with no limit in sight. “Conversely, there is a non-zero lower limit to latency which is based on distance, the speed of light in fibre and an allowance for signal processing (i.e. the routers, transport and other devices that are required to turn transport media into a broadband network),” it said. Both Telus and Rogers Communications Inc. argued that only some customers, such as online gamers, require especially low latency. Telus said that the applications most consumers use, such as video chatting, downloading files, or streaming video, function well with a latency of 150 ms, while Rogers pointed to a study on the impact of latency on remote surgery, in which surgeons said they couldn’t detect a lag time at 200 ms. “Rogers submits that a target latency measure designed to provide a high quality experience for online gaming does not serve to enrich and strengthen the social and economic fabric of Canada and its regions,” it said. But not everyone who chimed in on the application had the same perspective. The Canadian Network Operators Consortium (CNOC) said that the CRTC could provide the necessary leeway by tweaking its definition of an IXP to include only locations where network peering is provided, as opposed to the current definition, which also defines it as a location where ISPs connect with the global internet. A joint intervention from consultant Hyman Glustein and Concordia University professor Fenwick McKelvey read that the CRTC should reject Northwestel’s application, because the company doesn’t present enough evidence that the 50 ms standard is unfeasible or that that standard “is impossible to provision in the Northwestel service area now or in the future.” — With reporting by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca and editing by Ahmad Hathout at ahathout@thewirereport.ca

Lower CRTC latency standards, say large telecoms, northern gov’ts

News | December 12, 2018

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Lower CRTC latency standards, say large telecoms, northern gov’ts

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