Weapons of Mass Congestion & Weapons of Mass Distribution

Yesterday, I heard Richard French, the very brilliant and usually convincing former Bell senior executive, CRTC Commissioner, Quebec Cabinet Minister and man of many other hats and skills, defend internet throttling at the University of Ottawa.

It seems that we must accept as a premise that there is network congestion. He didn’t offer any evidence or citations to elevate this beyond a mere premise. Somewhat like “weapons of mass congestion” (my term) that is caused by “weapons of mass distribution” (my term), namely P2P applications (his explanation).

Mr. French said that less than 20% of internet users are using more than 80% of the capacity and that throttling based upon applications (i.e. P2P) is not only justifiable but necessary and that other alternative such as usage based pricing are unrealistic.

He simply dismissed any suggestion that throttling is being done to satisfy copyright owners. There is however, evidence that suggests otherwise. For example, events such as this.

Net neutrality (and its antithesis, which is throttling) is going to become a very important issue. And I mean VERY.

The future of the internet is at stake. We are at risk that it is going to turn into a new version of cable and pay television, controlled by the usual suspects.

HK