Spark has hit back at claims made by Orcon that the big telcos “throttle” or manage traffic, claiming it’s nothing more than a PR stunt.

Spark insists they do not currently throttle or shape broadband traffic.

Richard Llewellyn, head of Corporate Communications at Spark New Zealand, says that Orcon’s throttling campaign is contradictory: “despite their PR claim that they ‘refuse to throttle’, in fact they “may prioritise traffic”. From the customer experience perspective, “prioritising traffic” and “throttling” are essentially the same thing – slowing down some internet access in favour of other access”.

Spark says Orcon’s position on traffic management is exactly the same as Spark, “in that we don’t manage traffic currently, but reserve the right to do so in future”.

Llewellyn says any management would mean Spark prioritises time-sensitive traffic like general web-browsing, real time applications like Skype, online games and streaming video services over traffic that is not time-sensitive (like peer to peer traffic).