Canada Day: CRTC confirms traffic management rules apply to mobile too!

From Ars Technica: "Last week, Canadian regulators decided that ISPs all have to play by the same traffic management rules, regardless of the technology they use to deliver the bits. This makes tremendous sense, as opposed to the technology-centric approach taken previous by Canada (and still used in the US). Canada's FCC equivalent, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), laid down the rules for wireline ISPs last year, but at the time did not address whether they applied to mobile operators. Wednesday, CRTC confirmed they apply the same traffic management framework to mobile Internet access.

Internet traffic management must not be "unjustly discriminatory nor unduly preferential." Management must "be designed to address a defined need, and nothing more." Outright blocking of content is prohibited, and so is any "delay" technique in which content is "slowed down to such an extent that it amounts to blocking." Content that is not time-sensitive, such as most P2P traffic, can be delayed. Time-sensitive traffic, on the other hand, cannot be messed with at all, as any delay "amounts to controlling the content and influencing the meaning and purpose of the telecommunications in question." Investment, not traffic management, "is a fundamental tool for dealing with network congestion and should continue to be the primary solution that ISPs use."

Ofcom might note?