Net Neutrality: It is time political parties took a position

    OTTAWA, May 27 /CNW Telbec/ - The Canadian Consumer Initiative (CCI)
joined with several other groups today to urge all four federal political
parties to take a position in favour of net neutrality.
    CCI opposes the practice of 'throttling" by telecom giants such as Rogers
and Bell who examine Internet traffic in order to deliberately slow down
certain applications. The CCI hopes that the Canadian Radio-television and
Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) will quickly intervene to stop this
illegal practice. CCI asks also that the government take the necessary
legislative actions in order to guarantee the principle of net neutrality as
recommended by the Telecommunications Policy Review Panel in 2006.
    According to the CCI, large ISPs deliberately slow down certain
applications and thus violate several sections of communications law by
limiting citizens' access to telecom services, constraining the free operation
of markets and endangering the already fragile competition in the highspeed
internet market. The Canadian Consumer Initiative maintains that this type of
control harms technological innovation and strikes at the heart of consumer
privacy, the principle of technological neutrality in telecom and network
common carriage.
    In order to justify their dealings, the telecom giants falsely suggest
that certain users, especially those who share files on peer-to-peer networks
are criminals, misuse their services and endanger the transmission capacity of
the networks.
    These justifications do not hold water; the real motives are economic and
more fundamental: discriminatory control of certain kinds of content and
technologies, which jeopardize the very neutrality of the Internet.

    The CCI is a coalition of six major Canadian consumer organizations.

For further information: John Lawford, Counsel, Public Interest Advocacy
Centre, (613) 562-4002 x25, jlawford@piac.ca; Charles Tanguay, responsable des
communications, Union des consommateurs, (514) 521-6820 poste 257, (514)
743-0419, Tanguay@consommateur.qc.ca