Is there any good information? I see a lot of conflicting soundbytes and thought I’d ask the wizards…
First, this thread should probably should have been raised in the “General Chit Chat” forum since it’s not a technical issue.
But, it can be understood in a nutshell,
A few years back a number of ISPs who invested heavily into Internet backbone (and other high bandwidth) infrastructure wanted to start charging more for “passage” through their networks. There had already been instances where networks either blocked or throttled access to networks. I myself had to sometimes ask my ISP to route traffic differently than they had already setup.
The FCC (in the USA) stepped in and stopped all this, declaring a “Net Neutrality” policy that forced equal access to all.
Currently, the policy is being re-visited since the Infrastructure owners are finding that there are more high bandwidth solutions (eg video streaming in HD) that could potentially pay for higher use. But of course that would wreck a lot of business models which are built on lower costs. It could also stifle innovation. IMO what is unsaid is if higher fees are simply a way to improve profitability, so far I haven’t seen anything that suggests that raising fees would encourage more investment into additional infrastructure (which may not be needed since there is still a lot of dark fiber).
IMO,
TSU