Is the Internet Stalling?

Internet in North America is not a luxury any more. It is as much a part of our lives as running water and electricity. Simply put, the internet is the modern medium for the transportation of information. With building and development happening so fast in this country, we are quickly using up all kinds of resources as well as Internet. The Internet pipe is only so big. Once the pipe is full, you have to then add another pipe. With the Internet it is not just that easy, add another pipe I mean. With all the high speed Internet demands, Video demands, Instant Messaging, and social networking sites, the Internet is dangerously close to capacity.

Just recently, Bell’s solution of Internet throttling was brought to the forefront and now, Rogers has just admitted the same thing. Throttling is a Tech term used to describe the act of slowing down or limiting bandwidth. What the companies are doing is cutting back Internet access speed to certain types of downloads during peak times of usage in order to reserve bandwidth for the rest of their clients.

This is actually a little bit scary that companies cannot be totally honest with the clients and let them know what is actually happening. I also find it scary that the companies would resort to this tactic rather than using programs to apply billing to over usage. Most of the Internet Service Providers mention Download Caps in their pricing structure; you would think that they would have tools and programming in place to handle this. I am quite sure that if you have a $49.95 monthly plan, and your plan has a 10 gig cap and you went over by a couple of gig turning your monthly bill into a couple hundred of dollars, you may be persuaded to buy the movie rather than download it.

It could very well be in the near future that Internet access will become a utility, and billed as such. You use this much, you pay for that much. You want to download movies, and music, your bill will be higher than the basic Internet surfer. It was interesting that in a recent article on CNET News that they indicated that 5% of the Internet users in one Ottawa area was responsible for 20% of the download traffic.

Well it looks like the few bad apples did it again. Because of these few, the masses will have to pay more for another “Utility”. I just hope they don’t find a way to charge to bring it in, and then take it away.