There’s a serious traffic problem north of the 49th parallel — an Internet traffic problem.
Complaints that ISPs are deliberately slowing Internet traffic are on the rise in Canada, according to the National Post. The latest complaints outnumber those of the past two years combined, and reflect the continuing challenge of “net throttling” – or how providers control the flow of online traffic – faced by ISPs.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission requires that any noticeable degradation of time-sensitive Internet traffic, including video chatting, must first be approved by the commission. Providers must additionally disclose to their customers when they slow peer-to-peer file-sharing services. ISPs depend on such “traffic shaping” as one way to deal with heavy demand for Internet services; the commission recommends that approach only as a last resort, and suggests other tools to deal with heavy traffic, such as data caps.
Canada’s Internet traffic woes are reflective of a larger shift in the ISP industry away from unlimited online services in favor of a usage-based model. According to Deloitte, usage-based billing will become the predominant model by the end of 2012. With online demand growing more than 30 percent a year, providers will be forced either to throttle back their service speeds or simply charge more for additional gigabytes.
So what does this all mean to the data-heavy Internet user? Canadian or not, you’re likely to pay more for your service sooner than you might think.
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