Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 7th Sep 2007 13:37 UTC, submitted by Adurbe
The US Justice Department has said that internet service providers should be allowed to charge for priority traffic. The agency said it was opposed to 'network neutrality', the idea that all data on the net is treated equally. The comments put the agency at odds with companies such as Microsoft and Google, who have called for legislation to guarantee equal access to the net.
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Member since:
2006-01-01
I think the real problem here is one of expectations. Your ISP expects you to use the internet in a bursty manner, maybe downloading a song or reading web pages. When they sell you their n mbps service they expect you will not use the full potential of their service and they charge you based on this expectation.
Now, the internet is changing and things like P2P and video are causing the average user to become less bursty. Now, the ISP has to beef up their equipment and get nothing in return, because of course your service technically didn't change, you only changed how you use it. So the consumers expectation is no price increase.
What happens when everyone moves from bursty to constant connection? Who pays for this? The end user, the ISP or the content provider? And let's be realistic someone will pay.
If end users are anything like me, I would not want to pay any more for my service.
If the ISP pays, the end user pays so this is moot.
If the content provider, somehow, pays for getting their content to the end users then they can either charge the end user directly or use ad revenue.
The only new source of money I see in my example is advertising. Am I wrong? And the only one with access to ad revenue is the content provider, right?
If no one pays, does this force the ISP not to invest in providing high speed service in under served areas because the capital is being spent on upgrading existing customers?