As you may have read on Neoseeker, Internet service providers in US, the UK and Canada have increasingly  been using  bandwidth throttling to decrease network loads. Most of the throttling is aimed at reducing P2P traffic, specifically the use of BitTorrent. So even though you pay $40 or $50 a month for your broadband service, certain ISPs (such as Comcast and Bell Canada) surreptitiously limit the amount of bandwidth that comes your way. 

It looks like Google is working on a free software tool that will help consumers keep tabs on how much they are being affected by this throttling. Although a release date has not been set, Richard Whitt, a Senior Policy Director at Google, confirmed that they are working on the tool in a story published in The Register yesterday.

The primary goal of the tool is it allow people to have better idea of what their ISPs are up to -- because as of now, ISPs have been not appeared all the eager to let their customers know whether they do, or don't, throttle traffic. "We're trying to develop tools, software tools...that allow people to detect what's happening with their broadband connections, so they can let [ISPs] know that they're not happy with what they're getting -- that they think certain services are being tampered with," Richard Whitt was quoted as saying at recent talk in Santa Clara.