Internet traffic shaping
There has been some concern raised recently that various broadband service providers may use, or may want to use, traffic shaping to prioritize their own services at the expense of services provided by others. Traffic shaping is about prioritizing certain traffic over the Internet. It can be used for QOS (Quality of Service), or to impair certain traffic.
For example, a broadband provider might use it to make their own VoIP service work well, but degrade the performance of 3rd party VoIP providers. Or they might use it in an attempt to control what they view as bandwidth hogs or illegal activity ( eg. file downloading).
A Globe and Mail article looks at the Canadian perspective.
A techdirt post talks about attempts by US providers to gain the right to prioritze their own services. They suggest the best solution is to simply increase bandwidth.
There is no simple answer to this - but to me one thing is certain.
We are headed to a world where we will pay for the data pipe coming into our homes as a service on its own. Whatever data we consume or create over that pipe (including voice and video), may or may not come from the same provider. Broadband providers should compete for those data services on their own merits - not by tinkering with the pipe.