Rights of Canadian consumers and businesses may be in danger as Internet service providers engage in Internet "traffic throttling."

Rights of Canadian consumers and businesses may be in danger as Internet service providers engage in Internet "traffic throttling."

Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, warns against these practices and calls on Canadian regulators to adopt Net Neutrality principles, as well as demand greater transparency from Internet access providers.

The so-called "bandwidth throttling" or "traffic-shaping," by large Canadian companies, allows providers to prioritize data packets from sources deemed desirable, or slow down those they deem less so.

Geist points out that this type of traffic manipulation may also be used as a tool to undermine competition.

The issue of limited access to the Internet "fundamentally raises some critical competition concerns," explains Geist, as companies can manipulate Internet access to create preferential treatment for the content they often themselves provide.

For example, CBC's show Canada's Next Great Prime Minister, was offered to viewers via BitTorrent for download: CBC is one of the first broadcasters to do that, and it is a terrific initiative. However, some Canadians reported it took more than 11 hours to download this particular episode.

Keeping in mind that CBC is in direct competition with large-scale Internet providers, this creates a conflict of interests: "You can be assured that it's not taking 11 hours to view videos provided by them," says Geist.

Due to "traffic-shaping", applications such as BitTorrent are deemed to have lesser priority. Technically this isn't censorship, but comes close as slower service would make these applications "virtually unusable."

The impact is two-fold: Consumers would experience a censored Internet access, while providers would potentially limit growth of new Net entrepreneurs.

Without regulations, any "new innovation that is taking place would be entirely undermined," explains Geist. There is a danger that no new Googles, MySpaces and YouTubes would ever see the light of day, as established players would be able to stop competition and innovation in its track.

Net Neutrality, the idea that all data should have equal priority, is gaining greater public approval as concerns mount over unfettered access to Internet. Canada still has no clear rules or regulations ensuring access equality. Comcast, a major Internet provider in U.S., recently reversed its decision to throttle P2P protocols. Canada, however, has only begun to tackle the issue of Internet content access and distribution.