Re Google Raises Fuss Over Bell's Speed Bumps (Report on Business, July 9): Bell Canada and other telecommunications companies have been slowing, shaping and restricting Internet traffic for some time. In addition, the line between traditional television and new media has been getting blurrier every day. Because of this, the CRTC is set to revisit its 1999 decision to exempt the Internet from regulation.
In 1999, the Internet was largely e-mail and alpha-numeric services. It was not a world where our telecom, cable and satellite companies controlled more than 70 per cent of Canada's Internet service provider traffic. Moreover, it was not a world with TV distributed by Internet protocol technology. So the Internet is already being "regulated" - by boardrooms - except when giants such as Google draw attention.
Since 1999, more than half of Canadians have downloaded video from the Web, and about a quarter of Canadians do so at least once a week. So the CRTC's "broad investigation into the way Canadian ISPs manage the flow of traffic" is extremely timely. Better to have some Internet oversight urging Canadian content on the Web. The alternative is to have our telephone, cable and satellite bills subsidizing commercial appetites that hope to bypass the Canadian system altogether.
A Canadian Internet policy that ignores the electronic-screen impact of allowing the Web to be fully "regulated" by conglomerates that would kill the Canadian Television Fund, shut down the CBC and bump Canadian services to bring us more Fox News and Turner Movie Classics would truly be a Quisling fox in the True North chicken coop.
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