Rogers Communications will end practice of slowing Internet upload speeds

TORONTO – Rogers Communications Inc. (TSX:RCI.B) has vowed to phase out the practice of slowing some of the Internet traffic on its sytem, a move that should hearten those sharing movies and music or playing online games.

The telecom giant announced the changes in a letter Friday to the Communications Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission in response to an investigation into one aspect of the practice, known as throttling, in response to complaints from online gamers.

The traffic management technique had targeted peer-to-peer sharing sites like BitTorrents and had been used to slow the speed of large file uploads that were causing Internet delays for other users.

Although Rogers maintains that only a very small minority of traffic had been affected by the issue identified by the CRTC, the big cable TV and Internet operator said it has not only eliminated that specific kink, but will begin to end “traffic shaping” in March.

“Going forward we will stop traffic shaping all together,” said Kenneth Engelhart, senior vice-president of regulatory affairs.

“We’re making some big investments this year to increase our capacity so that is enabling us to end traffic shaping.”

Engelhart said he believes that should make online gamers happy, adding they appeared to be rejoicing on Twitter.

The practice will end with half of Rogers customers by June and the rest will be phased out by December, the company said.

“It’s something we were going to do, but I think it’s fair to say that we sped up the announcement a little bit,” Engelhart said.

Rival BCE Inc. (TSX: BCE) recently reached a similar decision and also plans to end the practice in March.

The CRTC’s enforcement arm sent a letter to Rogers last month saying that preliminary test results indicated the company was breaking rules governing how Internet service providers can control traffic on their networks.

The Canadian Gamers Organization had made the complaint to the CRTC.

However, Rogers said the tests, which involved sending unclassifed files over the web, had nothing to do with interrupting online gaming.

It maintains that very little traffic – about 0.005 per cent- was affected by the management of unidentified traffic on peer-to-peer ports.

However, it said there had been a few “isolated” cases of misidentification that would send some files through as unidentified, which caused it to be slowed.

Rogers was given a deadline of Feb. 3 by the federal regulator.