Gamers association, CIPPIC to request change to throttling disclosure policy

In the latest salvo fired over an escalating dispute between online gamers and Rogers Communications Inc., the Canadian Gamers Organization (CGO) says it intends to ask the CRTC to force Internet service providers (ISPs) to report all throttling-related complaints they receive to the regulator. The request stems from problems related to ISPs' ability to direct customers to their own complaints lines as opposed to directing them to the CRTC, CGO co-founder, Teresa Murphy, wrote in an email to The Wire Report Wednesday. “Unless you make a big deal about a problem or go the CRTC, the ISP can easily sweep the problem under a rug as if its not even happening,” Murphy wrote. Having filed complaints about the issue to the CRTC and the Ontario Ministry of Consumer and Business Services, the CGO is now teaming up with another high-profile throttling critic, the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), to tackle the issue. Murphy wrote that the organizations are drafting an application requesting that the CRTC amend its policy on Internet traffic management practices. The main objective of the request, she said, will be to require ISPs to forward to the CRTC the details of any consumer complaints they receive about throttling practices. The groups will also ask the CRTC to require ISPs to provide customers with regular updates on throttling problems that have already been reported, she said. “Currently, everything is forced on the user,” Murphy said by email. “The user must be the one to know exactly what the problem is, where to report it, fight to be heard and have it escalated, and then sit and wait for months on end never knowing if/when the problem will be fixed.” Publicly accessible, regular updates of customer complaints could also help ISPs save money because they would free up personnel who would otherwise be occupied with repeated calls from customers seeking answers to traffic management issues, she said. Murphy said forwarding ISPs' complaints to the CRTC would be “pretty much the only way we’ll be able to see the true scope of the problem with technical .” The renewed effort from the CGO comes a few days after Rogers responded to a complaint from the organization about apparent throttling practices affecting gamers online on the Sony Playstation network. In a letter to the CRTC issued last Friday, Rogers warned gamers that they should avoid using other peer-to-peer applications while playing games online if they want to avoid traffic management. Rogers reiterated previous comments—made this spring after problems were detected by World of Warcraft players on the Rogers network—that its throttling practises only kick in as users cross the 80 Kbps threshold while running non-time sensitive applications like peer-to-peer file sharing. “Like World of Warcraft, other games also run well below 80 kbps and therefore would only be impacted by our if they were misclassified and other applications were running at the same time,” Ken Thompson, the company’s director and counsel of copyright and broadband law, wrote in the letter. A week earlier, the CGO co-founder Jason Koblovsky publicly accused Rogers and the CRTC of breaking Ontario’s provincial competition laws—Rogers for failing to provide its customers with full information about its throttling practices and the CRTC for allowing Rogers to to do so. Rogers responded that Koblovsky’s complaint about slow service on the Sony Playstation gaming network was not necessarily evidence of unreported throttling but could indicate other problems. “As noted in our previous letters, there are other causes, unrelated to Rogers’ , which could result in the problem that Mr. Koblovsky has described,” Thompson wrote, but did not specify what those other causes might be. To ensure the integrity of the company’s Cisco Systems Inc.-manufactured traffic management systems, Thompson wrote, Rogers relies on Cisco’s team of quality control testers, as well as in-house software testers in the company’s labs. Rogers also “conducts specific tests on those games and applications that are the subject of customer complaints” and monitors for “issues our customers are experiencing through forums and other communications methods,” Thompson wrote. In response to the CGO’s complaint that Rogers does not inform its customers about problems they experience on the company’s network, Thompson wrote that the company provided information about the World of Warcraft issues through the media and online forums. “We have also responded to customers who have notified us of problems they are experiencing,” Thompson wrote. In a response to Thompson’s letter posted on his blog Friday, Koblovsky said Rogers’ reactive throttling disclosure practises are incompatible with Ontario laws that require full disclosure of issues affecting service delivery at the point of sale. “Nothing Rogers has provided to the commission I think satisfies the disclosure needed to comply with Ontario Law,” he wrote. “We also believe that it is not up to the consumer or myself to ensure that Rogers Network Management Systems are working properly.” Reached via email Wednesday evening, Rogers' spokeswoman Patricia Trott said the company's network management was in "full compliance with CRTC regulations." "Our internet access service agreement is compliant with the applicable disclosure requirements under the Ontario Consumer Protection Act," Trott wrote. “As a provider, it is Rogers responsibility to become compatible with their customers' needs, their customers should not be tailoring to Rogers.” nkyonka@thewirereport.ca

Gamers association, CIPPIC to request change to throttling disclosure policy

News | September 7, 2011

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