“ISPs throttle connection on own accord”

The role and responsibility of ISPs in the fight against illicit use of the Internet is always subject of debate. Disadvantaged rights holders and governments often turn to ISPs when Internet users misbehave. They point out that ISPs have a care duty, which stems from the technical ease with which ISPs, as intermediates, can intervene in the activities of Internet users and hosts of websites. ISPs can throttle or even terminate the connection.

In general, ISPs are reluctant towards intervening in their clients’ affair, opposing regulation. In doing so, they claim network neutrality: network managers treat all content equally. It is not up to the ISP to scrutinise users’ activities and prioritise bandwidth for certain activities.

It appears, however, that ISPs do just that, despite their claims. So declares Sandvine, a Canadian manufacturer of Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) tools. DPI enables ISPs to analyse the internet traffic of their clients on the level of the application (e.g. Skype conversations, torrent downloads) and subsequently allow, throttle or block any of these activities. Sandvine has supplied these tools to 160 ISPs worldwide, which together make up for 20% of the global broadband market, and estimates that 90% have an application specific traffic policy. Sandvine is not the only firm that supplies such products. It is safe to assume that figures will be similar with its competitors.

ISPs use DPI to make sure that traffic does not surpass their network capacity in peak hours.

The Canadian telecoms regulator, which is looking into this, concluded that traffic policies could harm consumers in two ways. Firstly, a discrepancy may arise between the promised speed and the actual speed of the connection. Clients might be getting less than their money’s worth. Secondly, it is unclear to clients which activities are throttled, when this may occur and how the policies differ from provider to provider. This lack of transparency disturbs the functioning of the market.

These two effects aside, it is remarkable to say the least that a sector claiming that Internet traffic should not be regulated, gladly make an exception for their own business.