Max is NOW!

Photo by Samscam.co.uk © 2008

On my way into work today on the beautiful Portland TriMet system, I was flipping through recent news headlines on my phone. Plenty of stuff about Obama, a little about some international affairs, and a real barrel of shit in the Technology section.

Link: AT&T may limit Web subscribers’ data use

That’s right folks, the internet is about to become that much more regulated. Although Comcast has previously held secretive bandwidth restrictions on it’s customers, there has never been an official bandwidth limitation. According to AT&T they are doing it to improve upon services and get “bandwidth hogs” to stop using up all theirs services. Of course, they could just regularly upgrade their systems and provide on-going  network expansion, but that would only lower their profits.

While I’m not the nefarious MP3/DVD download fiend I once was, this does pose a serious threat to many segments of internet users. The most obvious is the 5% of users who utilize 50% of ISP network resources. And while much of what that 5% does may or may not be legal, the point is that they are a backbone of the internet communities. Stalling their abilities to practice bandwidth freedom is a paving stone on the path to stopping Net Neutrality.

The other user set that will be effect heavily is business class users. While there is no mention of the fate of business class internet service limitation, this is undoubtedly included in their plan. Consider the small to medium sized businesses throughout America that rely on internet use as a staple of their business. I’m not talking about web services businesses who probably carry service through larger networks than AT&T or Comcast. I’m talking about the web start-ups, managing a small server via their Comcast Business Class connection, or the software companies sending gigabytes of documents and development files to their remote servers on a daily basis. Having to pay $1/Gb, on the average when reaching their monthly limits, small businesses will quickly become unable to afford what was once an unregulated bandwidth.

In the light of these recent announcements, one carrier has stayed resolve in their lack of bandwidth limitation: Verizon. While I have never been a customer of theirs, I may soon become one. It is hard to believe that in our economy AT&T and Comcast would even consider removing more value from their products. But apparently they don’t like having customers.

Seriously AT&T, you suck.