Slashdot Mirror
Net Neutrality Debate Crosses the Atlantic
smallfries writes "The network neutrality debate has raged on in the States for some time now. Now broadband providers in the UK have banded together to threaten the BBC, who plans to provide programming over 'their' networks. The BBC is being asked to cough up to pay for bandwidth charges, otherwise traffic shaping will be used to limit access to the iPlayer. 'As more consumers access and post video content on the internet - using sites such as YouTube - the ability of ISPs to cope with the amount of data being sent across their networks is coming under increasing strain, even without TV broadcasters moving on to the web. Analysts believe that ISPs will be forced to place stringent caps on consumers' internet use and raise prices to curb usage. Attempts have been made by players in the industry to form a united front against the BBC by asking the Internet Service Providers' Association to lead the campaign on the iPlayer issue. However, to date, no single voice for the industry has emerged. I thought that the monthly fee we pay already was to cover access ... but maybe it only covers the final mile and they need to be paid twice to cover the rest of the journey."
Sure, the upstream and downstream are being paid for, but those aren't the only directions that matter. ISPs have funded research which recently discovered the existence of heretofore unknown directions of bandwidth which are not accounted for in traditional network models and as such has not been profited upon until recently. These directions include the "leftstream" and "rightstream", the former being paid for by government subsidies and the latter being paid through extortion of content providers. Their research is ongoing though, with network theoreticians currently postulating that there may very well be a third set of bandwidth directions, colloquially known as the "forwardstream" and "backwardstream". We can also look forward to later discoveries which derive from current network ideas, such as the theorized existence of such bandwidth directions as the "upperrightstream".
Maybe the eggs would be made by lizards instead. Or snakes.