The main principle behind the concept of sharing information on the net is its ‘neutrality aspect’, whereby the main service providers or the government of a country maintains a passive aloofness about the content that is being processed and displayed at any webpage. These two major players i.e. the service providers and the government do not interfere in the content that is being generated. The consumers are free to access any information at any of the web pages without any fear or restrictions. This comes automatically under the consumers’ right to freedom and information.
In many countries around the world, the major telecommunication providers work against the main principle of internet neutrality by trying to impose a tiered service structure where, these telecom giants try to restrict the channels of communication. These restrictions are specifically seen in broadband services, Wi-Fi, VoIP, digital and cable television .They work against the principle of internet neutrality by offering more benefits to those consumers who opt for a higher price range of services.
Like many other countries in the world today, the question of providing internet neutrality in Canada is a highly contentious issue both for the public and the government. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunication Commission is a public organization which regulates all Canadian telecommunication and broadcasting activities. It controls the prices which can be charged by the cable/satellite television. As the Canadian broadcasting network is small, the commission does not allow non-Canadian broadcasters from airing advertisements, etc on particular time slots. It also controls all the content that is shown over the internet broadcasting, specially the audio/video outputs put forth by the various web broadcasters. It does maintain total neutrality in the matter of the rates charged, quality of the net content, and the business practices adopted by the different internet service providers.
The local landline telephone services in Canada fall under the jurisdiction of the regulatory commission, specially the major players like Bell Canada, Telus Mobility, etc. The VoIP services are generally not under any such regulations.
Countries generally resort to internet content blocking through Bandwidth throttling and IP Blocking. Bandwidth throttling is usually done by the Internet service providers with the intention of over utilizing the allotted bandwidth and thus to earn more revenue. This hampers the speed of network connection for peer-to-peer file sharing. The businesses that use Virtual Private Networks mainly for transferring encrypted data tend to suffer due to throttling measures.
The internet neutrality is questionable in Canada as some of the Internet Service Providers tend to block certain IP addresses from being accessible to the public. Harmful and malicious content on the net needs to be regulated and controlled, but when such restrictions are imposed in order to curtail the freedom of expression of all the players in the field, it becomes a case of the internet neutrality being affected. This has been the case in the Canadian scenario when Telus Company blocked the website of its striking employees. The CRTC had not given a favorable ruling for the Canadian IP providers when the latter had demanded that Bell Canada stop its malpractice of bandwidth throttling. But there are some companies like SE Telecom that favor internet neutrality over internet censorship and as such provide a silver lining to the entire issue.
