Iraq is melting my Internet
When your routers are in a particle board box, on a cot, next to a trailer, out in the sun…in Iraq, things heat up. In fact, by noon to past midnight, the heat nukes the hardware to incredibly slow speeds, if it works at all. So, sorry for the no-picture posts as of late, it’s difficult to get the frame rate up to a decent 1kb/sec in order to put up some pictures.
No worries, though. In case you haven’t checked it out, please visit Save the Internet. It’s a site dedicated to fighting for “Net Neutrality,” a hot topic for the docket.
Net Neutrality basically is the concept that all data on the Internet flowing through the wires of the world is equal — the system we use now. Phone companies want to change that to make the Internet more like cable, where you pay for “popular” content, like movie or sports channels. Charges might pop up to get to sites like ESPN or what-have-you, since they generate so many hits.
But mainly they want to charge sites themselves for the privilege of “information safe passage.” Meaning, if Amazon wants to make sure its customers can view Amazon.com, the company would have to pay the telephone companies a fee.
What does that mean for the average consumer? Well, prices of things online will go up, as these “fees” will be passed to the customer.
Sites like this blog might go away if I have to pay an extra fee per month to get you all here, in addition to the hosting fees and connection fees I already pay. No thanks.
Email might be delayed if you don’t pony up the money to “ensure” it gets to a recipient in a timely manner.
Online games might start to lag as phone companies would eagerly tax the bandwidth.
Of course, both sides of the issue are frothing, rabbit zealots. Net Neutrality advocates say it’ll be the end of the Internet, phone companies say they won’t charge too much. Who knows?
###
Talking Salmons 
Won’t charge too much… sure. They’ll charge as much as they damn well possibly can, is what they’ll charge.
i’ll contribute to the KEEP JOSH ONLINE FUND if worse come to worse!!
For serious.
Phone companies cite the constant use of bandwidth as the reason to make high-demand info a special priority.
I was trying to find it, but there was an article on CNET recently that talked about all the new high-end broadband packages out there phone and cable companies are offering. Prices went anywhere from $50 to $350 a month for bandwidth capable of handling something like 15 simultaneous high-definition video streams.
Anyway, the point of the article was that no one needed all that bandwidth, and most users would be fine with the slightest fraction of service the companies were capable of providing.
So why the sudden shift to “woe are we, woe are we, we have to charge for you to use bandwidth”? Where did the jump/slump come from?
All of it is BS. They want more money, that’s nice, charge more and see how many customers you have, don’t lobby Congress to force it out of the population through laws.
But then, I suppose that’s the way to go if you want to impose higher fees without losing customer loyalty. “Hey, it’s the law, buddy. Deal with it.”
Nice.
Yeah I’m getting sick of hearing about this damn internet toll tax. It’s insane. Part of the entire reason that the internet was created was for free information to all. As if these companies don’t already charge us too much, they want more. Greedy bastards.
i saw something the other day where you could join moby, of all people, on his crusade to save the internet. i’d much rather join the salmons resistance, if it comes to that, than that creepy little man moby. (no offense to those who like him, if there are those of you still out there.)
Unlike the rest of the things I comment on, this one is something that I actually know a great deal about. In fact I know so much that I’ll say very little, because if I get started I’ll quickly overwhelm someone’s server capacity, patience or both.
Bottom line: Net neutrality is the right thing to do, but it’s not going to survive. Why? Because the phone companies don’t want it to survive, and the phone companies ALWAYS get what they want. Always.
So say your prayers. Seriously.