Rogers pandemic ITMP policy ‘vague’ but does not discriminate, CRTC says

There is insufficient evidence Rogers Communications Inc.'s pandemic-driven internet traffic management policy (ITMP) disproportionally affects wholesale end users, but at the same time the company must disclose more information about the practice in order to comply with regulatory requirements, the CRTC rules in a decision released Monday. "The pandemic may have been seen, at the outset, as an emergency situation necessitating the application of a temporary ITMP to address network capacity constraints," the regulator acknowledged in the decision, but said that the emergency situation has "evolved into one where higher levels of traffic from usage have become normalized and are expected to continue over an extended period of time." Back in June, TekSavvy Solutions Inc. had asked the CRTC to force Rogers to stop applying the ITMP, arguing that Rogers was overstating the emergency for its networks caused by increased usage during the COVID-19 pandemic. "TekSavvy challenges Rogers’ stated rationale that the ITMP is intended to address times of emergency and high usage given that Rogers did not begin applying it until after Internet usage patterns had already began to normalize and continues to apply it as we progress away from the initial effects of covid19 on networks,” TekSavvy wrote at the time. In Monday's decision, the CRTC agreed, writing that while Rogers' "application of the 'temporary' ITMP could be considered appropriate at the outset of the pandemic to protect network integrity, the Commission considers that this is no longer the case." Rogers "proposed technical ITMP is no longer being employed only for the purpose of network security or temporarily to protect network integrity," the CRTC wrote. As to whether or not the ITMP discriminated against wholesale end users, the CRTC wrote that TekSavvy and other interveners "did not allege that ITMP specifically targeted wholesale customers’ end-users, but rather implied that there was a disproportionate impact on those end-users through general statements regarding the nature of secondary ISP traffic, Internet experience, and frequency in the application of the ITMP." The commission, the decision continued, has not "observed or received complaints that would suggest that there is a widespread or pervasive issue of disproportionate impact on wholesale end-user traffic." TekSavvy had argued in a further filing in October that Rogers' explanation of its ITMP usage was too vague, and that regulations require Rogers to explain who is affected, when the ITMP will occur, what type of traffic is subjected, and how a user’s experience will change under an ITMP. To that end, the commission agreed, writing that it considered the language used in Rogers' initial tariff application "to be highly generic, vague, and unclear," and said it does not comply with the ITMP disclosure requirements set out by the CRTC. In its decision, the regulator directed Rogers to revise its tariff pages to "disclose more details about its ITMP." — With reporting by Michael Lee-Murphy at mleemurphy@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

Rogers pandemic ITMP policy ‘vague’ but does not discriminate, CRTC says

News | January 11, 2021

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Rogers pandemic ITMP policy ‘vague’ but does not discriminate, CRTC says

News | January 11, 2021

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