Net Neutrality?
I’ve put a lot of thought into the topic of net neutrality, even more since I wrote my first post about it. In a way it is not so bad. I think I took an extreme example of what might happen. The tiering of service has already occurred on a transparent level (QoS) and is already happening on a business level (Dial-up, DSL, and Cable). In essence, you are buying your access to the network. Depending on how much you are willing to pay will affect your service. This tiering will not be anything new. In fact, it might be good. Tiering the whole network will give those users who pay the most the highest priority. So cable users will get access to their content faster, which is fair since they are paying for it. However, my only concern is the bottom of the crop. If tomorrow’s dial-up is today’s T3, then this delay of service might become more noticeable. My fear is that network technology will not keep up with the demand for usability. Ultimately, bandwidth is a commodity.