There is a theme in the comments on yesterday’s posting (and in the continued postings and comments on Michael Geist’s blog) that calls into question Bell adhering to its tariffs.
I have not seen anyone refer to the General Terms of Service (Item 10), which apply to all services purchased under tariff. It appears to me that Article 8 (Restrictions on Use of Service) seems pretty clear about Bell’s right to manage traffic loads, even those of resellers:
8.3 Customers are prohibited from using Bell Canada’s services or permitting them to be used so as to prevent a fair and proportionate use by others. For this purpose, Bell Canada may limit use of its services as necessary. In the case of any party line customer who unduly interferes with the use of any other service on the same line, Bell Canada may require the customer to obtain a higher grade of service, where facilities are available.
The growth in on-line gaming (from our kids Xbox or other systems) is putting some pretty strenuous demands on residential networks. Gaming isn’t as tolerant of latency as torrents or other large file transfers.
Our kids want responsiveness from their joy sticks. That would seem to be a factor in the reports that the network management seems to be time of day related to when the kids are out of school.
We’ll be looking at net neutrality at a special session at The 2008 Canadian Telecom Summit in June.