The hounds are starting to bark louder at the net neutrality door in Canada if a recent Montreal Gazette story is any indication. Most telling - and troubling - are comments made by Telus spokesman Shawn Hall who said the Burnaby, B.C.-based carrier is looking at QoS fees, as well as hitting online service providers such as Google and eBay with downstream tollgate fees for using its network (sounds a lot like SBC and BellSouth, doesn't it?). Meanwhile, cableco Rogers Communications concedes its "shapes" traffic (a.k.a. prioritizes) - something that BitTorrent and iTunes users have long suspected. The Gazette story, which touches upon many of the same issues that I covered in National Post story last month, is just more evidence North American broadband service providers are serious about changing the rules to offset the loss of local telephone revenue to cablecos, Vonage and Skype. If the FCC and CRTC don't step into the breach, the whole idea of net neutrality could soon disappear and broadband service providers will be laughing all the way to the bank.

Update: Here's what (hat tip to Good Morning Silicon Valley) from AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre told the Financial Times on this company's approach to net neutrality. It's very clear and troubling: "We have to figure out who pays for this bigger and bigger IP network. We have to show a return on our investments. I think the content providers should be paying for the use of the network -- obviously not the piece from the customer to the network, which has already been paid for by the customer in Internet access fees -- but for accessing the so-called Internet cloud. If someone wants to transmit a high quality service with no interruptions and 'guaranteed this, guaranteed that,' they should be willing to pay for that."