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Questions For Bell

By Michael Geist

CRTC Chair Konrad von Finckenstein closed today's session of the network management hearing by noting that the "Bell interrogation" will begin tomorrow morning. With Bell the final party to appear, the previous six days have raised many questions in need of answers.  I've posted some below.  Readers should feel free to add here or post to Twitter (#q4bell).

Traffic management

• Your disclosure statement indicates that you shape from 4:30 pm to 2:00 am?  Why not more specifically during periods of congestion?
• Your online disclosure does not specify the reduction in speeds due to shaping.  What are they?
• Rogers claims that P2P causes congestion at all times.  Do you have a different experience?
• Many major carriers from both DSL and cable do not traffic shape at all.  Why the difference?
• Do you traffic shape upload and download or just upload?
• What are the minimum speeds for upload (Shaw's are 80 kilobits/sec)?
• What percentage of bandwidth is reserved for P2P traffic (Shaw is 30%)?
• What percentage of your users are active P2P users?
  
• Is the shaping the same for all customers regardless of the tiered service?
• Do you shape wireless data services?
• Have you tried economic approaches (ie. Videotron's caps) to address congestion?
• What would be your costs to adopt the Comcast approach?
• Have you considered the Juniper technology of customer controlled prioritization?
• How do you address the privacy concerns associated with DPI?
• Do you have any information on the throttling experience raised by the CFTPA presentation?

Wholesale and Managed Internet services

• Does wholesale traffic affect your retail traffic?
• If it does, why (MTS does not)?
• Can you identify wholesale traffic?
• Do you reserve space for wholesale traffic?
• Can the wholesale traffic exceed its cap?
• Does your managed Internet services such as online video affect your public Internet services? If so, why doesn't this raise competition concerns?
  

Peering and Network Growth

• The hearing was told that Bell is the only major Canadian ISP that does not actively peer in Canada. Is this true?  If so, why not?
• Does the decision not to peer affect your customer experience? Does it raise your network costs?
• Many ISPs have indicated that growth is slowing and that they can handle growth through reasonable augmentation of their networks.  Is that your experience?
  

Guidelines and Tests

• Do you agree with the OIC/CIPPIC Oakes-style test?
• If not, what would you propose as an alternative?
• Should there be mandated disclosure requirements? For retail? Wholesale?

Finally, in a shoutout to Rogers, "If an application which could cure cancer acted like P2P, would it also be subject to traffic management on your network?"

Full post as published by Michael Geist on July 13, 2009 (boomark / email).