Kirsten McKnight's List: Internet

Smaller ISPs were given access to the networks of phone companies in the
first place because the incumbents held a natural infrastructure monopoly, which
was initially built through taxpayer funds when they were government-owned. The
rules were put in place to boost the number of competitors selling internet
access to the public, and thus keep prices down and service levels up.

Usage-based billing (UBB) represents a radical change to current practice and
is not warranted," wrote MTS Allstream Inc. vice-president of regulatory affairs
Teresa Griffin-Muir.

"It would effectively prevent competitive ISPs from offering flat-rated
Internet services, or any other type of offering that didn't follow Bell's UBB
model, since they would have no means of containing their costs, if their
customers were to exceed Bell's usage caps," she wrote.

Among these initiatives is the CRTC's plan to hold public hearings on July 6
in Gatineau, Que., on the traffic management practices of internet service
providers.

Those hearings were set up following complaints from CAIP that Bell Canada is
selectively slowing down or "throttling" internet traffic generated by
peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing applications such as BitTorrent or "shaping"
traffic to favour other applications over P2P in an effort to reduce network
congestion.