Could the FCC vs Comcast ruling lead to speed zones for the internet?
In the wake of the FCC smack down with Comcast, Internet pundits are beginning to speculate about what the decision could mean for the rest of the Internet. While many are waxing poetic about data caps and tiered pricing, a few are singing a different tune. If data caps and tiered pricing aren’t the possible future, what is?
One of the dissenting voices with a different idea of how to get back control of the Internet is Google’s main Internet evangelist, Vint Cerf. while everyone else is touting what amounts to a volume cap in the form of a data cap or control by punishment in the form of tiered pricing, Cerf sees transmission caps as the key to successful control of Internet load.
Why might people listen to Cerf? In addition to his current position with industry heavy hitter Google, he has the distinction of inventing the TCP/IP protocol. In other words, he is the reason we have the Internet as we know it to fight over.
When Cerf talks about transmission limits, he means buyable blocks of bandwidth that users of the Internet could subscribe to. These buyable transmission speeds would remain steady during high usage times, and could increase automatically if used during “off peak” times.
How would this affect a user like me? It would create a situation in which I was forced to pay even more for my Internet service than I already do (and I pay too much already at $90 per month for broadband). Since I work from home and am logged on as much as 20 hours a day some days, I can’t afford to have any slowdowns, peak time or otherwise.
Cerf’s suggestions may fall on deaf ears, anyway. The industry as a whole may have been struggling over time with the repercussions of too much upselling, but that doesn’t mean they will be able to see beyond their bottom line to do something innovative to ease the strain on their systems. The telecommunications companies are notorious for gouging the customer, so I’m certain the option they eventually pick will be whichever one does that the most.
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