Telecom Trends: Bell responds to CAIP

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Bell responds to CAIP

A little over a week ago, CAIP filed its Part VII complaint on Bell traffic shaping. The CRTC gave Bell until this past Tuesday to respond with its answer. CAIP has a few days left to submit its reply - the final word before the file goes into the Commission's hands.

Bell has explained its actions, not just to the CRTC but to the public in an interview with the Montreal Gazette and with CBC Radio.

In my post last week ("CAIP's application"), I described the 3-pronged test that will be applied by the CRTC in assessing whether to grant interim relief. Bell's answer asserts that CAIP has failed to clear any of the 3 hurdles, all of which are necessary in order to have interim relief granted.

Bell also suggests a lot of mis-information has been circulated. Bell puts forward ^{[para 46]} its clarification of what the ISPs have been reselling:

for many ISPs, GAS is the cheapest and thus the most economical solution. It is the most economical solution because it is designed to take advantage of the Bell retail network infrastructure (in contrast to the more expensive HSA service) by co-mingling its traffic with that of the Bell retail network. For this reason, ISPs cannot expect their traffic to be subject to preferential treatment on the shared network.