Rogers admits to slowing down World of Warcraft in Canada

In an effort to control what applications and services are used on the network, some Canadian ISPs are shaping internet traffic and throttling bandwidth.

This type of app discrimination started to become apparent a few years ago when Skype was launched in Canada. Floods of users reported that for whatever reason, the application wasn’t working properly on their desktops. And the cause? Rogers was intentionally jamming the pipes.

The CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) is well aware of Rogers’ tactics to slow down your connection. It doesn’t necessarily break any laws but the CRTC implores that Rogers clearly state “how” and “what” (apps) its internet traffic management practices (ITMP) affect.

Rogers recently replied to an inquiry issued by the CRTC that questions Rogers’ internet traffic management on World of Warcraft.

The major ISP has confirmed that it’s slowing down WOW and admitted it’s in fact interfering with the connection. Ken Thompson also stated in the letter to the CRTC that the problem occurs when customers are “simultaneously using peer-to-peer file sharing applications” and offered a lame solution;  turn off peer-to-peer within the Warcraft settings.  Blizzard, the creator or Warcraft uses bit torrent technology to update the game.

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Thompson concluded by saying that Rogers “sincerely regrets the inconvenience” and assured the CRTC that the company was working on a fix along side the supplier of the game. Within the letter Rogers also blamed Blizzard for making recent changes to the game which “created new problems” .

Thank you Michael Geist for sharing the 2 page letter on Facebook.