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Network Neutrality Threatened In Norway
eirikso writes, "In June 2006 NextGenTel, one of the biggest broadband providers in Norway, decided to deliberately limit the bandwidth from the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. The CEO of NextGenTel, Morten Ågnes, told the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten that they will give priority to the content providers who pay for better bandwidth. The Consumer Council of Norway takes this as a serious threat to network neutrality in Norway and wants to call a meeting with the biggest broadband providers in Norway to find a solution."
I think this is a trend that we'll have to get used to. When someone realises that they're in a position of power as an intermidary, they can, and often do, play both ends against each other for their own profit. It's a model employed by super-markets and record companies, price fixing by controlling supply and demand.
ISPs already employ charging models based on usage per month for their customers(consumers), charging (content)suppliers based on usage is trivial for them.
There is another solution: Actually start lighting up all the dark fiber, build the infrastructure that our tax dollars are supposedly paying for, and deliver actual, real, reliable bandwidth. This will probably be a result of increasing the flat-rate cost, which will probably be a result of ever more people discovering ways to actually use the bandwidth they're given. I have a housemate who's not very technically inclined, but watches live baseball games on his Powerbook, so we are going to have to face up to the reality: Moore's Law of (CPU|bandwidth|storage|GPU|resolution|wireless) isn't going to let up anytime soon.
My local ISP is making a lot of noise about fiber to the home. Their goal seems to be a gigabit pipe to everyone's house. I doubt they'll be able to come close to filling it, but at least they're thinking ahead.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I don't quite think you understand the issue.
There are four parties involved.
A. The content provider
B. The content provider's ISP / Hosting provider, whatever
C. The consumer
D. The consumer's ISP (in this case NextGenTel)
Note - A is _NOT_ a customer of D.
If A wants to serve more content at higher speeds, no problem, they pay B more money.
If C wants to get more content at higher speeds, again no problem, they pay D more money.
No one has any problem with that concept.
The problem is when D decides that they can extort money out of A, by throttling the traffic between C and A unless A pays them some money - regardless of the fact that D doesn't actually provide any service to A. They try to use the justification that with there being so much high bandwidth content around that they can't handle the load anymore, so someone has to pay. But they gloss over the fact that someone _IS_ paying: C, the customer that actually requested the content from A in the first place.
If C's internet habits are really costing D money, then they should be charging C directly, not charging the sites they visit - that's just insane.
I don't know how any of these companies think they can possibly justify it - they already have the means to cover their costs, it's not the content providers' fault that the ISPs are greedy enough to try to charge coming and going.
Advanced users are users too!
"What is it with these neo-communists on /. who think that people shouldn't be allowed to pay for higher quality service if they want it? Do you guys picket the airlines for offerring first class and coach?"
The customers of Nextgentel are the consumers that pay for their broadband connection. The only reason consumers pay for broadband is that there are content providers out there that create a market for the ISP. These content providers may or may not be commercial, but they all pretty much already pay some ISP (which may or may not be Nextgentel) for their high-bandwidth Internet Connection. So when a consumer tries to access some content he/she has already paid for accessing that content, and the provider has already paid for delivering it.
What the ISP is trying to do is squeeze money out of both sides, both the consumer and the provider. The result is that consumers (that have paid for their service) will have a hard time getting to smaller indie-sites, non-commercial sites and other content providers that can't afford to pay these extortion fees. Only the big ISPs has enough muscle to be able to do this sort of thing, and thus it serves to limit the number of ISPs available and thus reducing competition.
Also, it reduces the choice of the consumer, negating one of the big sales points of the Internet in the first place. Because it reduces choice, it has a strong possibility in limiting free speech as only big media corporations will have the money to have their voice be heard.
You don't have to be a communist to object to these to effects.