Net Neutrality?

Premium Internet is coming to a computer near you.

In the USA, a bill is going [has gone?] through congress to create a 2 tier internet by allowing telco companies to charge media content creators for providing access to their content over the internet, and then passing that cost on to the consumer [you] by charging for access to that [type of] website at a good bandwidth. That's a very rough summary of what's happening. This would effect a lot of the internet, by using up the high bandwidth provision for premium customers, leaving the rest of us in the slow lane. Rocketboom have done a great 'casual Friday' feature on the situation.

AOL and Yahoo are launching a paid for email service [premium customers again] to ensure email 'bypasses spam filters and gets to where it is going' ie business to business. I've heard talk of immediate delivery for paid for email, and 'within 2 days' for free email. That may be an exaggeration, but maybe not.

So how to stop this? Impossible in my view. What we can do though, is ensure that enough competition exists with ISP Providers so that cost to 'premium content' websites is kept to a minimum. In the UK there is a lot more choice for ISP provision, whereas in the States, it appears this isn't so. That's the area some lobbying should concentrate on....and we in Europe better start to think about this. Our 'free' [it never was..] internet will soon be no more.