pontificating on net neutrality options...
… i was able to have an outstanding conversation yesterday about net neutrality, with “one of the canadian biggies”… and i actually took the stance that net neutrality and the whole sordid debate was a little premature. That instead of arguing over it, and trying to force all bits to be the same, why not embrace the difference in the bits. Let’s go one step further, and let end users embrace their special bits, and give them portal power to change how the network should treat their bits.
The network provider who can harness the power of the dynamic classes of service, and present it to their customers in a way that is easy to manipulate and understand will be able to easily differentiate itself in the market. Not to mention the option of being able to get out of the commodity bandwidth business, if only briefly.
How thrilled would you be, if on monday you could prioritize your voice traffic, because you were working from home, and thursday you could prioritize your video traffic, because you were downloading movies for the weekend…. or if on saturday you wanted to prioritize music, so you could fill your iPod for a party that night?
Indeed - carriers and content providers alike could have “priority VPN” services… you could get iTunes Pro or MySpace Pro or NetFlicks Pro…
Back in the ’90s, when i worked for one of the first ISPs in Canada, i swore i’d never pay for internet access - why would i - dialup was all i ever needed, and i could always swing a dialup account somewhere…. silly me. I am thrilled to be paying for what is now an essential service. I have a feeling i’d be even more thrilled to pay for being able to differentiate my essential bits.