Net Nuetrality??

I got an e-mail from Meg Whitman, CEO of eBay, warning me that if I don't act, the internet is going to be split into two tiers of service - one absurdly expensive and fast for big money corporations, the other slow and for the hoi polloi. She wants me to join some "it's our net" groupto lobby congress and stop the major telcos from dividing the net into a super highway for the corps and a dirt road for the rest of us.

Anybody have thoughts on this? Seems to me that eBays interest lies in empowering the individual, so I lean towards that, but is there another play I'm missing? Sorry if this has been covered before.

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Originally Posted by Platinum Pete

but is there another play I'm missing?

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the telcos get an extra revenue stream

The internet is already segmented. QOS and intelligent Routing has been around for quite some time. What this does encourage is for Telco's to not spend as much money expanding bandwidth/infrastructure, as they can create the normal laws of supply and demand, forcing clients to pay by a bit rate structure instead of connection.

Basically the Telco's want to charge other corporations more money. The cost will be passd along to YOU.

Everyone (unless your a telco CEO) should support net neutrality. A couple bad things that could happen.

Telcos want to charge the major sites (google, e-bay,amazon,msn..tgr padded room) more $$ because of the vast amount of intraweb data that flows back and forth to these sites. They're already paying for their T1/OC3/OC12 connections, and those costs would get passed onto us.

As a home broadband customer, your provider could severly limit what you do with your connection. Skype? gone. XBox live? That'll be extra $5 month. Access to youtube, extra $...and so on.

What happens when the broadband providers get involved in providing content and services like VoIP? It's only a matter of time and a tiered internet would give them an overwhelming competitve advantage.

In reality, it will become tiered to some degree and that's just business. But I think we need some legislation to prevent the telcos/isp's from getting out of hand.