Canadian ISPs lose traffic-shaping case

Canadian content. So far it has decided to stay away from extending that content carried by providers over Internet. But Grant suspects the commission fears the controversy over 'Net neutrality might overwhelm those hearings, so put off the traffic-shaping discussion to the summer.

In Grant's view, service providers have a valid argument that in the face of increasing traffic volumes some sort of Internet management is demanded by the companies who are paying millions of dollars for the infrastructure. As he puts it, providers are asking "do we keep building more lanes or put in some stop lights, or at least some yield signs?"

Traffic-shaping isn't the only weapon in the service providers' arsenal. Many also restrict the amount of data subscribers can download a month. Bell, for example, has a 20Bb a month download cap on its CDN$27.95 Internet Essentials Plus service, and 100Gb a month on its faster Max 10 plan. In Ontario, Rogers has a 60Gb cap on its CDN$34.95 (US$28.31) Express service and a 95Gb monthly download limit on its faster CDN$99.95 Extreme Plus plan.