ISP's confirm '2012: The Year The Internet Ends'

[dhz4u]

Update: Bell Canada and TELUS (formerly owned by Verizon) employees officially confirm that by 2012 ISP's all over the globe will reduce Internet access to a TV-like subscription model, only offering access to a small standard amount of commercial sites and require extra fees for every other site you visit. These 'other' sites would then lose all their exposure and eventually shut down, resulting in what could be seen as the end of the Internet.

Dylan Pattyn *, who is currently writing an article for Time Magazine on the issue, has official confirmation from sources within Bell Canada and is interviewing a marketing representative from TELUS who confirms the story and states that TELUS has already started blocking all websites that aren't in the subscription package for mobile Internet access. They could not confirm whether it would happen in 2012 because both stated it may actually happen sooner (as early as 2010). Interviews with these sources, more confirmation from other sources and more in-depth information on the issue is set to be published in Time Magazine soon.


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More can be found Here

What do you guys think ???

[componentwarehouse]

I dont think EVERY ISP will restrict access, there will always be a few smaller ones who dont use this scheme, who will be the ones who succeed if all the rest start blocking sites.

This is just making the big stronger, and stopping all the competition.

Alex

[rlodge]

Full internet access available on request. Prices subject to change at any time. "Full access does not include access to illegal materials."

That one little line tells me everything.

1. They want you in a "nickel & dime" type of contract where they can bleed the most money from you.

and

2. They want to censor the internet. (By the way - Who gets to determine what is "illegal content" and are they talking "illegal" or what they deem to be "immoral", too?)

[LHVWB]

I'm sorry but this is never really likely to ever actually happen, there is enough diversity in the ISP market in most places/countries to ensure that this doesn't happen, any companies that try this will go bust simply because only really incredibly stupid people would buy these services, meaning that anyone with half a brain will buy their services from elsewhere. Making it a bad business strategie to even try this.

To have this sort of huge monopoly within the market after the market has diversified dramatically seems absolutely impossible. I am from Australia so I am not completly aware of the situation in the US, but I do know that in Aus people who actually want good services just boycott the major companies anyway, because there are smaller companies which offer the same services, often at much more resonable prices.

[Smith6612]

I've noticed the little broadband providers not really following along, maybe only making very few changes. If ISPs do this, I better see an unlimited amount of download and upload that is uncapped then if I can't visit 90% of the internet. Otherwise, the little guys usually don't even bother mainly because they're small enough to the point where they just don't have the money to pay for the filtering system OR they don't want to lose money. Verizon, my ISP has already stated that they're staying with Network Neutrality right now, but Canada's been having a lot of problems with ISPs lately, everything from Roger's Cable capping to Bell capping/throttling 3rd party resellers.

Besides, if ISPs agree that the internet ends in 2012, then why are they planning on capping and blocking all sorts of things? I don't see their network acting crappy. Actually, every ISP's network I've gone over unless it's just a hop that's problematic has never given me any problems with latency or anything. Now, if they're talking about a bandwidth apocalypse where the internet will be overloaded to the limit, that's a stretch. Every day providers like Level 3, Cogent, and those other big guys are running new backbones and trunks to keep the internet running smoothly. If not, those guys would be out of business because all of their peering deals would be gone because of a bad network. Lack of bandwidth? Pathetic. Spend the money to build the network bigger, and in the long run, watch loads of happy customers stick with you, paying you.

[DeadBattery]

God, if this ever happened to my ISP, I'd send 5 million complaints about it.
I doubt this will ever happen. If it does, I will hate the internet. I go onto many sites, not just 200 popular ones.

[Hazirak]

I've noticed the little broadband providers not really following along, maybe only making very few changes. If ISPs do this, I better see an unlimited amount of download and upload that is uncapped then if I can't visit 90% of the internet.

That's the whole idea - you get unlimited bandwidth... as long as you ONLY visit the sites your ISP decides it likes. Otherwise you get next to nothing (if anything at all), and are charged a premium for going over it.

Verizon, my ISP has already stated that they're staying with Network Neutrality right now...

Nope. They're pretty much full of crap. What's interesting is that this very clearly drops their common carrier status, yet I don't see thousands of lawsuits cropping up because they let something "objectionable" through.

Besides, if ISPs agree that the internet ends in 2012, then why are they planning on capping and blocking all sorts of things?

Once again, that's the whole idea - get users to accept that some things are going to be blocked or just not work as well as it should, and then progress from there until the internet becomes the next television-like scheme where you can only view what they say you can... unless you put a little more money in their pockets.

Spend the money to build the network bigger, and in the long run, watch loads of happy customers stick with you, paying you.

I think it's been proven more than once that most ISPs will do everything they can to avoid this, since it involves actually spending money. The US gov't gave AT&T money to upgrade the network a while ago... but the upgrade never happened. Several ISPs offer "unlimited" service at a low, low price... then severely oversell the bandwidth on their network and threaten to cut customers off when they decide to take advantage of their "unlimited" access, claiming they are ruining other customers' experiences through an "unfair" usage of bandwidth.

The fact is it doesn't matter how happy your customers are when there simply isn't any competition to be heard of... which is all too common in the US. I believe the term for this is "monopoly".

[TechAsh]

There is already a thread about this here: http://forums.x10hosting.com/compute...ow-2012-a.html

I don't think this will happen any time soon. Ok, ISPs may try it out, but I think there will be too high a demand for full internet access that they will drop the idea after a couple of months.

A thought: I really hope this doesn't happen in the way suggested in the article. If it does, what will happen to x10Hosting...

[zapperpost]

Frightening... Inflation? Who cares. AT&T already +10'ed their price.
Still, this is not likely. It doesn't make sense, and all ISPs will lose most of their customers, if not all, and this place would be inaccessible.

[Smith6612]

A lack of bandwidth in an area is often times the cause of old technology (like DOCSIS 2.0) or poor management (putting other DSL users on someone else's line card). It's not a lack of bandwidth at the head ends or trunks, as those have already been constructed very well. There's no excuse to a provider who spends maybe millions a month on advertisements to not at least spend a thousand or so dollars upgrading the technology on their network. Besides, since a lot of new stuff is backwards compatible, they don't have to shell out money to upgrade people's ONTs/modems, unless the customer orders something where they adbsolutely need to. Besides, modems are pretty cheap. ONTs, not as cheap (around $300). Now, I can see why ISPs would want to kick customers as well for making their peering bills high as well, but also don't forget, an ISPs network is usually pretty tough and can take a lot of load before things start going wrong. Most of the ISPs I've seen don't even bother to route their internet traffic through their network, lowering their costs and instead insists on killing providers like Level 3 and Cogent. It's a lack of poor planning, NOT a lack of bandwidth.