Wednesday, July 30, 2008

We need bandwidth, ISP's prefer profits

Source: "Comcast Illegally Interfered With Web File-Sharing Traffic, FCC Says" by Cecilia Kang, The Washington Post, July 30, 2008.

Three of the five FCC Commissioners have agreed Comcast illegally interfered with customer Internet traffic, a fourth was undecided at the time the article went to bed, and only one (a Republican) had refused to condemn the company. The Comcast case is a bellweather, and other ISP's are likely to meter Internet traffic or worst if they think they can get away with it.

Lots of other countries give consumers more bandwidth than we do in the United States, so it is not unrealistic to think we can and should have enough bandwidth that metering would be silly (rather than dangerous). Good on the FCC Commissioners who are doing their job on this one!

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