May 07, 2008
The real answer to net neutrality
In research I've done for a Regulatory Innovation class this semester, I've come to the conclusion that most of the current net neutrality proposals would probably do more harm than good. That being said, I think that the rumor that Comcast is considering metered bandwidth couldn't come soon enough. It's time the ISPs stopped pretending they could deliver unlimited data when they weren't really willing to do it. Choosing ISPs will be easier when you've got a fixed download limit upon which to base a decision.
I use a lot of bandwidth, but even I would have to work pretty hard to hit 250GB in a month. That's 8GB a day. I might do that once a month. I can see myself averaging 500MB a day, possibly even 1GB, as things like YouTube continue to suck bandwidth. Even if my two roommates used as much bandwidth as I do--and they don't--that's still only 3GB a day, a mere 90-100GB per month. 250GB is plenty, today, and though I'm not going to be silly enough to suggest that this will be plenty forever, it should last long enough for more robust infrastructure to be deployed.
