Net neutrality not an issue in Australia

The Australian ISP iiNet was in the news last week because of a court ruling that the provider does not have to terminate the connection of users that download from illegal sources.

The judge’s verdict contains more interesting information on another topic, reports Ars Technica. The judge writes extensively about iiNet’s services and modus operandi. The ISP caps and shapes their users’ traffic. "When an iiNet user exceeds this quota they are ‘shaped’ which means the speed of their connection is slowed to reduce their ability to download”.

That is not the whole story. The judge goes on to describe how the ISP cuts deals with media companies and doesn’t count the traffic they generate towards the cap. "However, any data downloaded from the Freezone is not included in the monthly quota of a subscriber. In this sense, an iiNet user can consume unlimited amounts of data from the Freezone per month. Further, an iiNet user is still able to use as much data at maximum speed as is desired per month in the Freezone, even if that subscriber is otherwise shaped for that month.”

9 February 2010