Back in 2009, Canada passed network neutrality rules designed to protect consumers from anti-competitive treatment of network traffic, though at the time there was a lot of concern about the rules being adequately enforced. Last year a request made of government data revealed that there were fifty two complaints made over the first two years the rules were in place, with roughly half of those having to do with Rogers and their total inability to keep their network management systems under control. Since last fall however, complaints have spiked with 51 complaints having been filed since last September.
The new rules have changed the way many Canadian ISPs tackle traffic management, with Bell announcing last December they'd be backing off throttling completely. However Rogers not only continues to throttle legitimate applications, they continue to insist they're in total compliance with CRTC rules -- despite that clearly and repeatedly not being true:
Rogers is not tipping its hand about any upcoming change to its traffic management policy, but says it operates in "complete compliance" with CRTC's traffic management guidelines. "It's something that our network people look at all the time, and we are constantly evaluating, but we have nothing to announce today," Ken Engelhart, senior vice-president of regulatory affairs, said in an interview Thursday. Engelhart added that past technical glitches with its popular World of Warcraft game have been solved...
Users in our forums continue to complain that Rogers is engaging in some of the upstream-traffic-choking TCP packet hijinks that got Comcast in so much trouble here in the States. It is expected that Rogers will ultimately buckle and move to more intelligent network management, but for now it remains clear that denial is their primary strategy. While Rogers broadband users may not be seeing more intelligent network management just yet, they are getting a new price increase as a new year's present.read comment(s)