| Please Sir...Can I have more? People seem to forget the Internet is still just a very young, new technology. Just barely off the ground, and only commercially viable in the last 10 years, it runs on networks that were designed primarily for other technologies.
While the first several years were mostly a battle between software and hardware...each leap-frogging the other every few months, making last month's purchase practically obsolete...and the last few years were all about providing content, the challenge today is bandwidth.
Our consumer appetite for more and more content, is far exceeding ISP's technological capabilities to upgrade their networks. I think I have had this P4 3.00Ghz system running since I had 1.5Mb/s service, 6 years ago. Now I have 18Mb/s service and I'm still using the same PC.
Unfortunately the all-you-can-eat bandwidth buffet, has to undergo some changes while the network technologies and architectures evolve. I guess throttling and caps are going to be a fact of life for a while.
If the new technologies do not get deployed fast enough, usage-based billing will be the next logical step. |
