Australian incumbent Telstra has been revealed to be planning a trial involving throttling peer-to-peer traffic over fixed-line networks using deep packet inspection technology.
The operator has confirmed plans to trial a variety of new network management practice options - including shaping of P2P and other services – on “a small number of ADSL customers in [the state of] Victoria.”
Telstra was forced to make the confirmation in a blog post, after word of the planned trial was leaked to Australia's Fairfax Media. The article on the topic attracted 327 comments, many of them critical of Telstra, before comments were automatically closed.
The blog post insists that the packet inspection technologies that will be used to identify P2P traffic “is used only to identify the signature of the traffic [not] the content,” and that the trial will “not involve any monitoring or tracking of the sites visited by our customers.”
Victorian customers in the trial areas will given a choice of whether to participate. Fairfax reports that users will have to request to opt out.
Depending on the outcome of the trial, the network management technologies being examined may be extended nationally, but Telstra's post insists that “no decisions have been made to extend any of the network management practices being tested in this trial to our broader customer base.”