Friday, February 22, 2008

"Get Ready for a Crackdown on Broadband Use", is the title of an article in the latest PC World that may be one of several articles in this issue that you may want to read. In this article, we are alerted to the possibility that broadband "hogs" - those users who are streaming or downloading DVD's, music or other things that use a lot of bandwidth- may be charged for their excess usage. That makes me wonder how this will effect how libraries deliver Internet access to customers in the future if this does happen. Will we be charged as a net Internet provider because we provide free access? How will this effect our virtual users who use MOLDI things? Will we (libraries) petition for an exemption from any fees if this becomes real? What do you think? Read it and other topical articles and let's talk.

By sowens at 3:44 PM
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6 comments:

**5p34k1nt0ngu3z** said...

Check out this article from Engadget. More to come later.

February 23, 2008 at 6:31 PM
sowens said...

Wow! If that is not reminescent of big brother and 1984 I do not know what is. About the wireless island, OSU's distant education program had a faculty member several years ago who did a presentation at OLC using distant "doctoring" as an example. They had the prison population in mind as that would almost eliminate the need to transport a prisoner to a hospital for even the most intricate procedures.

Keep passing them on!

February 25, 2008 at 2:49 PM
**5p34k1nt0ngu3z** said...

I know this is a lot but here are some recent articles from Arstechnica dealing with Comcast:

Comcast, net neutrality advocates to square off Monday

Disgruntled customer sues Comcast over P2P throttling

Comcast tweaks Terms of Service in wake of throttling uproar

And an article about AT&T with an nice graph:

AT&T boosts DSL speeds; still playing tortoise to FiOS hare
----------------------------------
Browse Comcast articles on Arstechnica

February 25, 2008 at 6:59 PM
**5p34k1nt0ngu3z** said...

Forgot to add an actual comment.

Europe and Japan have way more bandwidth than the US but a lot of that infrastructure is government-funded through taxation. It will be interesting to see how this all pans out for consumers here, especially as legal streaming and downloading of larger files at higher resolutions becomes more prevalent. For examples see Joost or Vuze (the once-and-future torrent king Azureus)

Chart courtesy of a Digg article from ~6 months ago.

February 25, 2008 at 7:13 PM
**5p34k1nt0ngu3z** said...

Another thing to consider:

If Wi-Max or another similar alternative becomes standard, and folks latch on to the portable pc idea*, will we need exemptions and federal funding like we have now. If not, will that money be channeled towards keeping staff and adding more electronic resources since high-speed access will be bought-and-paid-for by the individual user?

*People already have in the form of Sony PSPs and Cellphones with increasing functionality, but the majority of folks still don't know that they are being overcharged and undersold when it comes to subscription fees and hardware/software capabilities in their dedicated machines.

February 26, 2008 at 4:25 PM
**5p34k1nt0ngu3z** said...

With technology moving this direction, what I said previously holds even more weight. A few good comments on this Geek.com posting.

February 27, 2008 at 12:36 PM

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