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ISPs Race to Create Two-Tiered Internet
An anonymous reader writes "The ISP race toward a two-tiered Internet is picking up speed. This
article from Michael Geist
points to a wide range of examples involving packet preferencing,
content blocking, traffic shaping, and public musings about premium
charges for faster content downloads. ISPs are now reducing
access to peer-to-peer applications, blocking Skype, and, scariest of
all, lobbying Congress to let them do it."
http://www.networkmirror.com/AQGdtdGeemUeo3VD/www. michaelgeist.ca/index.php%3Foption%3Dcom_content%2 6task%3Dview%26id%3D1040.html
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
This is a complete load of bollocks.
You're referencing the rest of your comment, right?
In the PC world, there is no regulations on the cost, quality or performance of PCs. We have hundreds of companies selling products -- big boys like Dell and HP, small guys like Ram's PC Shop. Guess what? Prices have fallen even against inflation.
In the automotive world, we have heavy regulations -- steel tariffs, union requirements and other government mandates. Car prices have risen, faster than inflation.
In the soda world, we have almost no regulations (except for some USDA/FDA ones). Soda prices have fallen against inflation, and generic versions taste as good as the real ones in some occasions. I can buy a 2 liter of diet cola for US$0.49 versus US$0.99 a few years ago.
In the medicine world, we have excessive regulations, and prices have climbed beyond inflation.
In the clothing world, we have few regulations (some tariffs on cotton and other materials). I can buy a nice, quality hoodie for US$10 at H&M. A few years back they were over US$50 at the mall.
Tell me again how regulations help and anarchy hurts?
Actually, we have that in place in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Highway 407 charges per km for usage, and takes you the same place the 'free' highways take you. They just sell it as 'faster' (even though the speedlimit is the same) as it's suppose to be less congested.
The government built it, and then sold it to a private company to run. They make millions off it.
Port 80 sounds like a good choice.
Try port 443. ISPs may send your outgoing port 80 to a transparent proxy, and such a proxy could simply drop traffic it doesn't understand, crippling port tunneling without affecting web surfing. Typical port 443 traffic is already encrypted, so if they block any of it they risk all their users complaining.
You're right in putting the legal solutions ahead of the technical solutions for this one, though. If someone is selling lemons their customers should be talking to a lawyer, not a mechanic.
Rogers High Speed Internet (http://www.rogers.com/ is already doing the following:
. As a side effect, it's affected iTunes (http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,14747626) and XBox Live (http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,15038493) usage.
8 8371) although they do so selectively.
- Throttling back Bittorrent speed to the point that it as well as some other P2P services are unusable (http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,15033490)
- Killing off their Newsgroup servers as of the 15th of this month (http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,14769820)
- Creating and enforcing bandwidth limits(http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,144
And all of this without letting their users know up front. Lovely. This is what you Americans have to look forward to.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
look forward to a few years from now when Japan and other countries in Asia will have cheap, and abundant bandwith (at least 100Mb/s, probably wireless to boot) and I'll still have a 1.5Mb/s DSL line and be paying MORE for it. Yeah, that'll be great.
;)
Sooo, you are saying, in a few years, you think places like Japan will have LOWER internet speeds than it does now? I had 112 Mbit fiber to my home when I was in Tokyo LAST year... Of course, if cost an ungodly $40 a month and installation was nearly $100 (with only a measly 80% "special price" reduction, I had to pay close to $20! The horrors!)
I don't know about Fido & Rogers, but Telus was a mostly western company and Clearnet mostly eastern. After the merge, they had solid national coverage. It seems more like a fast and cheap way for Telus to expand into eastern Canada rather than getting rid of a rival.
The barrier to entry for the cell market is very high now. We probably won't see a new cell providor in Canada for a long time now, and rates will stay where they are.
Is that why Virgin Mobile just started up this year? With lower rates than everyone else?
The thing that really stops major competition in the cellphone world is not cost-of-entry for new providers, it's things like service-provider locks on phones and non-transferable phone numbers. I doesn't matter how many providers there are if you can't easily switch from one to the other.
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