Blocks, throttling and caps

Download caps is something we’ve had to live with for a long time in this country. My cable Internet provider imposes a 20GB download limit, and every cellphone provider in Canada imposes ridiculous limits on standard contracts in the order of 5MB, 20MB or at the most 100MB. The problem, obviously, is that as web sites become more complex, they take more space, and as more services start appearing online, such as video streams and Peer to Peer (P2P) transfers, people need to use more bandwidth.

The big issue is how network providers want to make as much money as they can, and spend as little as they can. They refuse to upgrade their pipes to allow more bandwidth through, and as such view anyone who wants to use more than the average as a threat to their profits. The rational they give is always that a few people abuse the network and it impedes on others, but the fact is those few are not so few anymore, as plenty of people now watch media streams like YouTube, or download using P2P.

The troubling part is that lately, everything we see in the news has been going the opposite way of what should be happening to satisfy those growing bandwidth needs. Caps are not going up, they are coming down. While they are common here, in the US many ISPs had none, and are now adding them, with some going as far as saying people should only use 5GB per month!

When they are not capping people, they are putting in equipment that monitors the use of their network and then throttling, or degrading, the connections of people who use certain applications, such as VOIP software (like Skype) or P2P transfers. Comcast was famous for degrading BitTorrent and recently got reprimended by the FCC for doing so. When they aren’t throttling, some providers go so far as treatening to disconnect users who decide to use certain applications on their network.

Net neutrality says the Internet should be free from interference by the providers. It means whether you use a cable link, DSL or dial-up, wherever you are in the world, you should be free to use any lawful network application you want. Every month, new restrictions are put in place by companies, and the network is less and less neutral. The real goal of the providers is to make the Internet like TV is: A series of approved web sites, those who pay the various providers for exposure, for a flat fee, and any other web site would be blocked and unavailable, unless each user pays extra for access to more sites. All I can say at this point is it’s a sad trend, and hopefully people will speak out enough so that net neutrality can be restored.