Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Does the CRTC support Net Neutrality?

Yesterday the CRTC gave a very small win to the Canadian Net Neutrality fight, by disallowing Bell and Rogers (who lease network lines to smaller ISP's) the ability to slow down networks on leased lines. However Canadians with the big teleco's are still having to deal with the slow lane on network traffic with certain applications, and unfair bitcaps paving the way for a 2 tiered internet to emerge in Canada.  We also rank far behind the rest of the world with respect to network speeds and upgrades, while the wholesalers (Bell, Rogers, Shaw etc) are bringing in record profits.

The FCC and the Obama admin on the other hand has taken a strong stance on Net Neutrality in the US, one that makes the CRTC look almost anti-consumer:





Considering we've already had and lost this debate in Canada with the CRTC (CRTC bought an argument from the big teleco's this had more to do with network maintenance in 2009 and is allowing network throttling with individual ISP's), it will be interesting to see just how Canadian consumers react to the CRTC's incompetence on this issue, when the Americans end up with more online rights than we do, and Canadian constitutional rights are sold away to corporate interests as a result of this incompetence.

The CRTC and politicians must act on this issue in Canada to protect Canadian consumers, and their rights.  We need to revisit the Net Neutrality debate here in Canada, and the political will to do so.  Since the CRTC has refused to acknowledge and protect Canadians on this issue on whole, the issue becomes legislative.  Canadians need to keep this in mind during the forthcoming federal election and keep a close eye on what's going on with Net Neutrality in the US. WAKE UP CANADA!:



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