Telecom companies are bringing faster speeds to us, bringing broadband to those that never had it before, increasing profits, and all doing so at a cheaper cost than ever before. Yet, they are fighting for, and getting and implementing, capped bandwidth.
Right now, most ISPs will allow for unlimited bandwidth for each customer. They might throttle back people who likely are torrenting things, sure, but for the average Joe Schmo who just wants to watch Netflix all day, he can.
But not for long, not if the telecoms get their way. With bandwidth caps, you're not only paying more for your bandwidth (that gets cheaper for the telecoms to give us by the day) but you are limited to the amount you can download. But why? Why cap us if they have the infrastructure to provide us all? Why not just keep the abusers of the networks from hogging it all?
Because they can get away with it. And because they're scared. Those are the two big reasons.
Most towns and cities have a very limited ISP list. Some often have just one Internet provider. Near-monopolies or monopolies are bad for business, or rather, bad for consumers. They can raise the prices and cap our bandwidth (and charge us even more when we will inevitably go over) because we have noone else to turn to.
The average person did not use nearly the same amount of bandwidth a few years back. Before the advent of online gaming, HD streaming video like Hulu or Netflix, Youtube and more, we all didn't download as much. Now with these services we download a heck of a lot more. And it'll increase more as time goes on. More video services will be in HD. More people will use Skype to communicate with their families, or their wifi networks and FaceTime with their iPhones, or downloading games or playing those online.
And with these bandwidth caps, we as a people are going to start running into those caps, one by one, more and more of us. And when we do, and are punished for using the services we pay for, we will stop using those services. And that is precisely what the telecoms want.
Netflix is in near-direct competition with cable providers for our entertainment dollar. You can watch tons of shows and movies, many of which are streaming, for around $9 a month. Or, you can pay $40 a month for a fairly-standard cable package, most of the channels of which you aren't watching anyways.
Telecoms are pushing through legislation and forcing upon consumers policies that are going to stifle the development of the Internet, all to try and force competition out of business and line their pockets with gold.
Just thought you should know.
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