Internet traffic shaping seen stifling innovation in Canada

A group of more than 75 Web-focused companies and organizations, including such heavyweights as Google, eBay and Amazon, are calling on Canadian regulators to develop a "nuanced" approach when it comes to the thorny issue of phone and cable companies that manage Internet traffic on their networks. In filings this week to the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission in advance of a July probe into the issue of Internet traffic management, the group rejected the suggestion put forward by Bell Canada Inc. and Rogers Communications Inc. that certain bandwidth-intensive applications need to be actively managed in order to prevent them from bogging down the Internet. Both Bell and Rogers currently use special software to sniff out mainly peer-to-peer file sharing protocols such as BitTorrent and put them in the equivalent of an Internet slow lane during peak periods of usage.