Internet under threat by stealth?

There is a worrying effort underway recently to put the time limit (or at least some from of cap) back on the internet. This goes against the principles of net neutrality and the progress that has been made since the days of dial-up modems. What is perhaps more scary is the stealthy approach that is being taken by both government and major industry players to install this cap.

Mobile phone operators seem content to cap internet use with restrictive data plans rather than supporting its growth with truly unlimited add-ons. Current offerings always have the caveat of fair use and often 500mb or 1gig limits apply. Data costs in the USA seem very high compared to the UK and the recent efforts of Verizon and Google to hash out a supposedly fair compromise over net neutrality seem weak.

Recent UK government efforts have focused on addressing big industry concerns such as piracy (through the much-hated Digital Economy Bill) rather than dealing with the end-users rights. Even the recent effort to make those wishing to access smut have to opt-in seems sneaky. On the face of it seems like a worthwhile effort to protect the vulnerable but this is bound to involve some form of surveillance (packet-sniffing) to monitor web traffic, a far scarier development.

Even BT, the gatekeeper for the internet in the UK has said it will allow content providers to pay for their data to receive higher bandwidths, in essence creating two-tiers on the web. Big guns like YouTube would be able to afford the upgrade but smaller start-ups would be stalled due to the likely prohibitive cost being a barrier to entry.

2011 will likely be the year a number of these issues are clarified but the end user seems to have little in the way of power to influence the decisions and indeed the general public may be completely unaware of the whole issue.