Canadians Find Traffic Shaping "Reasonable"

gehrehmee writes "A recent Canadian Press Harris-Decima poll on ISPs' use of traffic shaping suggests that 60% of survey respondents find the practice reasonable as long as customers are treated fairly, while 22% believe Internet management is unreasonable regardless. The major Canadian Internet and phone service provider Rogers, meanwhile, compared 'person-to-person file-sharing to a car that parks in one lane of a busy highway at all times of the day or night, clogging the roadways for everyone unless someone takes action.' Is there a lack of education about the long-term effects of traffic shaping on free communication? Or are net neutrality advocates just out of touch?" The poll found that only 20% of respondents had ever heard of traffic shaping. The article is unclear on whether the "60%" who found the practice "reasonable" are 60% of all respondents — most of whom don't know what they are talking about — or 60% of the minority who know. If the former, then the exact phrasing of the question is the overwhelming determinant of the response. At the CTRC hearings, which wrapped up today, Bell Canada executives revealed that the company "slows certain types of downloads [P2P] to as little as 1.5 to 3 per cent of their advertised speed during 9-1/2 hours of the day."

Comments

Re:Using the truth to bolster a lie

[plover]

it's disruptive to more people if it throws away the VoIP packet.

Oops, fixed that for me.

Re:Invasion of the opinionated idiots

[gEvil (beta)]

People who use car analogies to appeal to people who would otherwise not understand a thing about the topic are like that asshole in the white Escort who sat in front of me at the light this morning yapping away on his cell phone, too oblivious to notice that the light had changed.

Re:Ever worked for an ISP?

[jez9999]

At the time an ADSL line was too expensive for most people so this way we could all share one and split the cost (£3 per month).

An ADSL line costing £3/mo was too expensive? When was this, like 1700?

Re:Using the truth to bolster a lie

[Anonymous Coward]

A movie download? In my internet?

Re:Here's a better poll question

[cbiltcliffe]

Do you think Bell and Rogers should invest some of the money into increasing bandwidth that they oversold thousand times over, instead of .... lobbing politicians?

I don't know about you, but I kind of like the idea of lobbing politicians. Kind of like dwarf tossing, only less politically incorrect.

And more satisfying.