Not Neutrality?: U.s. Weighs Options For Turbo-boosting Nation's Broadband Into The 21st Century

[Moontanman]

Not Neutrality?: U.S. Weighs Options for Turbo-Boosting Nation's Broadband into the 21st Century

International governments and ISPs gather at Columbia University to discuss speeds and limits of data networks

 

RUSH HOUR: Cisco Systems, which makes most of the networking equipment over which the Internet runs, predicts that Internet-protocol (IP)based traffic will increase 4.3 fold between 2009 and 2014 worldwide, to the point where 750 exabytes (an exabyte is one billion gigabytes) of data per month are coursing through the Net. Image: © PETER NGUYEN, VIA ISTOCKPHOTO.COM

 

The Internet has ushered in an era of largely unfettered access to a wide variety of information. Yet, although so much of what the Internet has to offer is gratis, access to the Internet itself has never been free. This dichotomy lies at the heart of the prolonged and hairy "net neutrality" debate over what Internet service providers (ISPs) should charge for their services and what role those companies should play in managing the flow of information over their infrastructures.

 

Flat-rate versus tiered-pricing structures, data equality versus prioritized content—the arguments rage on in the U.S. with no end in sight, even as other high-tech countries, South Korea in particular, claim to successfully moved beyond the issue.

 

 

 

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=net-neutrality-future-broadband&sc=WR_20101027