Privacy Commissioner Orders Bell Canada to Clarify Network Management Policy

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Privacy Commissioner Orders Bell Canada to Clarify Network Management Policy

5:09 pm on August 30, 2009 | Category: Telecom Services, Internet, Regulation

Canada’s assistant privacy commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, has ordered Bell Canada to provide consumers with more information about its network management policies, particularly the practice of ‘deep packet inspection‘ (DPI).

DPI technology allows Bell to identify subscribers that are using high-volume applications (such as peer-to-peer file sharing services), and slow down this traffic at certain times of day in order to ease network congestion.

Denham’s ruling, which was made public on Friday, orders the company to change its service agreement and Frequently Asked Questions page for high-speed internet users, to make it clear that personal information is collected and retained for network management purposes.

“Given that Bell can link its Sympatico subscribers, by virtue of their subscriber ID, with internet activities (in this case, type of application being used) associated with their assigned IP addresses, in my view, IP addresses in this context are personal information,” Denham wrote.

A Bell Canada spokesman said that the company would comply with the ruling but is waiting for clarification regarding what wording to use on its FAQ page.