Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Net Neutrality Comment Deadlines Moved as New Information Emerges

The CRTC has moved the deadline for public comments on net neutrality until the 23rd as new information has come to light. The ISP's argument in favour of traffic shaping relied heavily on the assumption that bandwidth use would continue to grow. They argued that this would clog their systems and force them to pick favorites.

But when forced to reveal actual numbers the results showed:
"The figures from seven ISPs also reveal that annual growth in total traffic volume declined for two consecutive years from 2005-06 to 2007-08 for five of the seven ISPs, in one case dropping from 66 per cent growth in 2005-06 to 21 per cent growth in 2007-08."
Bell, Rogers and Shaw will no doubt try to twist these numbers around to back up their argument. As Evan Esar once said “Definition of Statistics: The science of producing unreliable facts from reliable figures.” But once that falls flat the only argument they will have left is their desire to control what information Canadians are exposed to and to profit from that control. Again, don't forget to tell the CRTC what you think, you have an extra week to do so http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/crtc_submission

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