Over the past few months, there have been lots of talk about how the ISPs in the United States are going to start charging you with respect to ‘how’ you are using the internet. For example, if you are using your high-speed cable connection as a phone service then the cable provider wants to tack on another fee to get their ‘fair share’. And considering that home broadband use is up 40% according to a recent Pew study this should be a concern for all of us paying for high-speed internet.
There was an interesting article in the International Herald Tribune about this titled, Digital Dialogue: ‘The Internet isn’t free’ where the author interviews Tim Berners-Lee (father of hypertext).
We’ll see what happens in the future but one thing I know, the average user has to pay attention to this or the large business lobbyists in Washington will get their way, i.e., we pay more.