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Netflix Neutrality, Speaking Out Against Tiered Plans
By Taylor Gillespie
Expert Author
Article Date: 2011-07-11
A member of Netflix's management derided the recent maneuverings of the Telecommunications Industry that he witnessed at the annual National Cable Television Association. He was not speaking about the recent agreement by ISPs and the Entertainment Industry to send increasing "alerts" to people seen to be sharing copyrighted content. He was speaking of the intentions of the Telecom companies' when they are planning on the eventual future where bandwidth is scarce and customers must offset that demand by paying for bandwidth and content in tiers. It is the only way they see to stem the growing use of high-speed Internet services such as high definition video streaming.
David Hayden, the General Counsel at Netflix, in an op-ed piece for the New York Times calledWhy Bandwidth Pricing is Anti-Competitive, wrote that the ISPs are essentially making a fellacia necessitas, or a fallacy of necessity; whereby they state that bandwidth is becoming more scarce, upgrading the current infrastructure is too expensive, and so therefore, the consumer must pay in tiers to limit their consumption. He argues that it is not an expensive upgrade and that already bandwidth costs are much cheaper than they ever have been in large part because of modern networking technologies. TheWashington Post made the connection to the recent moves of wireless companies in introducing tiered data plans.
With wireless companies, AT&T, T-Mobile, and now Version switching to completely tiered data plans, and now talks of the traditional ISPs also moving to tiered data plans based on usage, the era of unlimited bandwidth may be coming to and end. The folks fighting the good fight for Net Neutrality may find the battle heating up. While many people argue that you should pay for what you use, it seems no one is arguing that you should be able to saturate a line as much as possible, normal usage limits should not entail a pay as you go model. Perhaps the general public is so used to unlimited browsing habits that the backlash could keep ISPs in check.
About the Author:
Taylor is a Staff Writer for WebProNews
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