A new study from Harvard University revealed that Canada possesses some of the slowest and most expensive Internet services in the world, contradicting what the nation's communications regulatory board found last year.

A report by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission last year tagged Canada as broadband leader on the grounds of the benchmark of penetration per 100 inhabitants, which essentially signifies the number of people to have access to high-speed Internet at home.

"Canada continues to see itself as a high performer in broadband, as it was early in the decade, but current benchmarks suggest that this is no longer a realistic picture of its comparative performance on several relevant measures", said the report from the university's Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

On the overall basis, the study placed Canada at the 19th position worldwide in Internet access. Canada trailed the United States, and was well behind the overall leaders - Sweden, Denmark and Japan.

Also, the report revealed that foreign ownership rules and the dominance of a small number of telecommunications monoliths have rendered Canadians in a position to pay some of the highest prices for services that do not match those of the leading nation.