The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission has ruled and will allow Bell Canada, Rogers and other Internet Service Providers to put a speed limit on customer’s Internet connections when they need to.

The ruling has been feared by those in favor of net neutrality, who want all Internet traffic treated equally. However, this ruling puts Internet connections on the same footing as hydro and long distance services, where time of day and type of usage can impact prioritization or cost (think peaksaver programs and after 6pm calling). Prioritizing Internet service in a similar, controlled method may just make downloading episodes of Lost less important than a remote connection to a work computer so you can get your job done. If this ends up being the case, we would applaud the decision.

The CRTC ruling says that throttling can only occur if certain conditions are met, and customers must be notified in advance. Currently we are seeing throttling moved around from location to location with a very wide impact. In particular, we often see all encrypted traffic getting throttled. When we setup a customer to work from home, their connection to their office server is always encrypted, and therefore bandwidth throttling negatively impacts their connection, and the employee’s ability to work. 

The mobile worker trend is continuing to grow. Through mergers, aquisitions and organic growth, we are seeing customers adding employees to their companies without expanding their workspace. We are hoping the CRTC ruling will cause ISP’s to advance the technologies they are using to throttle traffic, and not restrict the relatively low bandwidth remote worker technologies. Time will tell.