Traffic management is necessary because bandwidth is less than infinite. Extreme consumers will impair service to others if there is no mechanism to prevent this. My company recently implemented bandwidth guarantees for VOIP traffic on the fiber between our buildings because file transfers were causing drop outs on phone calls. In other words our routers throttle file transfers to provide decent QOS for voice. I like the CRTC's approach because it provides transparency of ISPs QOS policies and creates an environment for competitive incentive to avoid abusive restrictions, with some fallback for adult supervision.

I'm a moderately heavy bittorent (Vuze) user. My ISP is Rogers Cable, whose internet service is available in a number of speeds/caps/pricing from $25 to $150 per month. Rogers has been reasonably open about its traffic management practices and is on record as throttling bittorrent on the upstream (from the house) because this is a scarce resource. Problems for me - nil; obscure torrents with few peers/seeds run slowly, popular torrents download like sh** through a goose; surfing and Skype work smoothly even in peak periods. I left Bell Sympatico when my experience was the opposite.