Two years after a class action lawsuit was filed, judge Ester Shtemer, from the Lod District court, ruled against 012 Smile (subsidiary of Partner Israel), one of Israel largest ISPs for its traffic shaping policy (see the full decision below, Hebrew).The plaintiff claimed that the 012 did not provide an appropriate speed to its subscribers, when P2P file sharing programs were used, and asked for a compensation of over NIS70M (~$20M).
012 Smile said that they are not committed to provide any specific speed, and they use traffic management policies to prevent P2P program to takeover all available bandwidth, as file sharing is different from interactive web browsing. 012 admitted that file sharing users were discriminated, that they over-subscribe their infrastructure. However, they did not participate in the Glasnost (see "Glasnost: These ISPs are Shaping Traffic!" - here) tests that were presented as evidence by the plaintiff.
[Related post: "Israel: Carriers Must Disclose Broadband CIR" - here and "[Israel] ISPs Respond to the CIR Regulation - What do they Promise?" - here]
012 Smile CEO, Uri Wertman (left the company earlier this year), testified that they have 500,020 subscribers; an estimated 25% were using P2P file sharing applications, and 45% of them were discriminated - a total of 56,252 customers were affected.
The result?
- Smile 012 will provide 9 months of free speed upgrade to each customer asking for it (worth $2/month)
- 012 smile will deploy a control system that will ensure that the network will provide 98% of the accumulated demand (95% at peak hours) of all customers.
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