Appeared in the Toronton Star on November 6, 2006 as Fear of a Two-Tier Internet Last week, while most cable and telecommunications observers were focused on changes to the rules for income trusts, news of record earnings for Telus, and a Statistics Canada report that illustrated how the cable industry […]
Post Tagged with: "net neutrality"
Net Neutrality Back in the Canadian Spotlight
In a telling coincidence (I think), Canadian Press has two net neutrality stories out today. The first is a general piece on network neutrality concerns from a Canadian perspective. Bell Canada is quoted as saying that "our position on network diversity/neutrality is that it should be determined by market forces, […]
Net Neutrality in Norway
Net neutrality concerns are apparently not limited to North America. Norway's public broadcaster faced network neutrality issues this past summer after a leading ISP deliberately limited its bandwidth (hat tip – BoingBoing).
Net Neutrality and the CBC
The CBC recently released its submission to the CRTC as part of the examination of the future of broadcast in Canada. The submission interestingly raises network neutrality concerns, though it does not use that specific term. Rather, as part of a discussion on Internet video at page 19, the CBC says:
The business case analysis for Internet video is complicated by the fact that suppliers of broadband connections may also have incentives to control the bandwidth available for Internet video. Canadian cable companies engage in "bandwidth shaping" which allocates different levels of transmission capacity to different services according to the operational preferences of the cable company. This type of bandwidth shaping can ensure efficient use of transmission capacity. It can also ensure that Internet video by third parties does not become a threat to the business of the cable company, whether it be the delivery of traditional television programming to cable subscribers, VOD or the distribution of cable company-owned Internet video services. In light of this complex mix of issues, it remains unclear whether Internet video will become a primary means of distributing video content on a commercial basis.
This is network neutrality in action.
Berners-Lee on Net Neutrality
Tyler Hamilton of the Toronto Star has an interview with Tim Berners-Lee in which the WWW founder expresses concern about a two-tier Internet.
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