Greetings. As some ISPs increasingly seem to approach the operation of the Internet with something of the egalitarian finesse reminiscent of a medieval warlord, an urgent issue moves ever more toward the center stage -- either the Internet is a crucial resource -- and getting more important every day -- or it isn't.

If the latter, we can let ISPs do pretty much whatever they want -- and subscribers will just have to make do and pony up for whatever the ISPs deem fit to offer.

On the other hand, if we view the Internet as an infrastructural necessity, we need to start thinking in the same terms as power and water, and strike a balance between the commercial interests of network operators vs. society's needs.

As for bandwidth caps, historical surveys of past news items are instructive. Go back to 2002, or 1998, or even earlier, and you can find stories warning of the imminent need for caps due to concerns over "bandwidth hogs" and the like. I remember similar scare tactics back when the ARPANET backbone was 56 Kbps!

The big ISPs' newly resurrected infatuations with bandwidth caps are often disingenuous at best. The DOCSIS 3 data standards are going to provide a whole lotta bandwidth for the cable ISPs.

On the DSL side, AT&T is particularly suspect. For years, they've been publicly boasting that they didn't see a need for bandwidth caps for their subscribers, since supposedly AT&T DSL didn't suffer from the same "architectural limitations" as cable.

Less than a year ago, AT&T was saying that their DSL superiority made bandwidth caps unnecessary, to wit:

Some AT&T customers use disproportionately high amounts of Internet capacity, "but we figure that's why they buy the service," said Michael Coe, a spokesman for the company. -- September 7, 2007 - Washington Post

Why suddenly all the talk of caps from AT&T? Could it have anything to do with their ugly U-verse VRAD boxes sprouting like mushrooms in AT&T service areas, ready to provide television programming, Pay-Per-View movies, and other content that might monetize more effectively if competing Internet-delivered offerings were effectively stifled by bandwidth caps?

More and more, we're being flimflammed when it comes to Internet connectivity and associated terms of service limitations.

Sooner or later, subscribers are going to push back. And then all bets on possible outcomes will perhaps finally be on the table for real.

--Lauren--