Bell "Shaping" Internet Traffic

Bell Irks ISPs With New Throttling Policy

Rocky Gaudrault wants Bell Canada to take its hands off his customers' data. The chief executive officer of Teksavvy Solutions Inc., an Internet service provider (ISP) based in Chatham, Ont., says a new plan from Bell to "manage" the Internet traffic on his network is compromising the service he offers his customers. For more than a year, Bell and other Canadian ISPs have utilized "shaping" techniques, essentially slowing down certain kinds of Internet activity on their networks while giving priority to other data. Most of the traffic being shaped is peer-to-peer traffic, which is used to transmit large files, such as movie files.