This story was written by Brett Winterford and Julian Hill.
The leaders of three of Australia's largest ISP's have declared the Net neutrality debate as solely a U.S. problem--and further, that the nation that pioneered the Internet might want to study the Australian market for clues as to how to solve the dilemma.
Net neutrality is a term coined by Internet users who oppose the increasing tendency among network owners (telecommunications companies) to tier or prioritize certain content on the network.
The debate was sparked after several American and British service providers offered to charge a premium to prioritize traffic connecting with some sites over others. These service providers claim the Internet is "running out of capacity" due to excessive use of rich content like video and file-sharing traffic. The only model with which capacity can be expanded, they argue, is to charge large media companies to prioritize traffic to and from their sites.
But Simon Hackett, the managing director of Adelaide-based ISP Internode, argues that it is ridiculous to suggest bandwidth is "running out."
"I don't subscribe to the view that network capacity is finite at all... Optical fiber basically doesn't run out of capacity, it's just a question of how fast you blink the bits at each end," he said in a recent interview with ZDNet.com.au. … Read more
Manage updates with the Download App
