« The Crux of Net Neutrality... »

In Canada, there is growing interest and concern in the different directions that carriers and content providers are exploring; relative to Net Neutrality.

There is a pro-net-neutrality site that is petitioning the Canadian Government to seriously consider the implications of allowing internet services to run unchecked by the carriers. They support a neutral network architecture, but interestingly enough, they support Quality of Service (QoS), and the measuring of bits and bites (getting what you pay for and paying for what you get), which is outstanding, they are simply against the ugly underbelly of QoS, which is prioritizing of traffic based on protocol, source and content.

That being said, it’s exactly that discriminatory part of QoS that the carriers have their eye on.  Being able to promote specific content, specific protocols and specific sources, and making that traffic easier to access than a competitor’s has an alluring appeal to some network providers.

I want to go where I want on the internet, and regardless of where I go: Amazon or Ebay or iTunes or Joes Underground Goth Recipes, I want to go there unfettered. I don’t want to know that if I’m an iTunes addict I’m going to get charged more than if I’m a Puretracks junkie, if i’m a Bell Canada Customer, or vice versa if I’m a TELUS customer. If the carriers suggest that downloading a certain amount of bits and bytes per month is going to cost $X, that’s fine, but don’t tell me that downloading from iTunes is going to cost more or less than downloading from Puretracks.

Net Neutrality in Canada

While net neutrality supports metered billing based on counting bits and bytes, it does not support metered billing based on the content type. E-Mail, Video, VoIP and gaming services alike MUST be billed in a consistent, equal and non-discriminatory way.

Technorati Tags: Net Neutrality, Bell Canada, TELUS, iTunes, neutrality.ca

Comments

[Eric]

I think that playing with net neutrality will prove more difficult then most providers realize. Also once that the public understands what this means to them, they may choose to do business with the companies that practice true neutrality. From my understanding its a lot easier for cable operators to discriminate by type of traffic and point of origin then it is for Telecoms to do.