I don't know if you have heard much about this Net Neutrality issue but it looks like the Congress is getting ready to sell the internet to the highest bidder. A Senete subcommited has basically done that. Even Apple and Microsoft are on the same side of Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality is the push to keep the internet open. Currently the carriers such as Cox or Quest do not monitor what goes through the pipe to your house they only charge you for having the pipe. What carriers want to do now is to monitor what is going through the pipe and charge an extra charge for "premium" content. Such as high speed video. In this way they can make deals with big content providers to to charge a premium for a certain type of content and then pass some of this charge to the content providers.
The big concern is that with this new potential stream of big dollars, the basic internet will be stuck at the current speeds or lower. In effect marginalizing other sites and making them seem of poorer quality. Eventually, all you will have is the premium content. The internet will turn into something like television networks.
It isn't a done deal yet. The full Senate has to vote on it and then of course the House. Personally, I wouldn't have any problem with this if you had many choices for service providers. But most people only have Cable or DSL, with one provider each. For me it is cable only since DSL requires being close to a substation to work.
3 comments:
The argument against net neutraity is always "no regulations, regulations are bad for business". I feel the internet is veering far off to become a revenue generator for business, not even close to the original intent which was the free exchange of ideas. So what the big businesses want, the big businesses get. I don't really like it.
At the same time, maybe I just need to go with the flow and accept reality.
Don't give up. When Americans voice their concerns in large numbers, Congress takes notice. From comments I have heard in the hearings, it sounds like there is some concern for squeezing out the little guy. The other side of the coin says that this will open up a large revenue stream to create the infrastructure for very high speed connections.
Did you know that South Korea actually has much higher connections speeds than the US (according to Wired magazine). Their high end home speeds are 20-30 Mbps while we max out at about 5-6 Mbps. I don't know the reason for this but I thought it was odd.
It seems that with the current system that we have there has been some major increases in speeds already. I don't see why the gateway providers can't just charge a higher monthly fee for higher speed options without the need to control what content comes through the pipe.
Really amazing! Useful information. All the best.
»
Post a Comment