Broadband Internet Speed test

Internet blogger Om Malik has written an interesting piece on the new, faster broadband connections that are now becoming available to US consumers. His premise is that the faster speeds are not that important, because they don’t translate into a significantly better experience for the end user.

The gist of his argument is that most online activities, like standard websurfing, are not significantly sped up by high-bandwidth connections, and the few that are, such as downloading, are not typically time-sensitive anyway:

Websurfing runs at only about a megabit per second, and nearly everything else except downloading is effectively throttled down at the source. Downloading turns out to have some natural limits as well; at 100 Mbps, you can download enough music for 24 hours of listening in only four minutes per day. The practical result, confirmed by high speed leaders like Masayoshi Son of Yahoo BB in Japan, is that the faster speeds yield only a extremely modest increase in real traffic demand.

He goes on to suggest that the push for faster Internet connections comes from the network operators themselves. With all the infrastructure already in place, it costs only a tiny bit more to offer a higher-speed connection, but the consumer can be charged a significantly higher amount for “premium” access. This is a fairly standard formula for most businesses. The concept of “super-sizing” fast food works in a similar fashion, for example.

The idea of those who do prefer a faster connection (for example people who like to watch streaming video from the BBC) paying for faster service seems at first to be relatively benign. However, when you look under the surface, it may in fact be part of a larger plan by the network operators that could end up creating a “two-tier” Internet. This plan may be the beginning of the end for “network neutrality.”

Network neutrality is the concept that no particular type of traffic on the Internet should receive preferential treatment for speed or access. It was the design for network neutrality that made the Internet possible in the first place. It keeps ISPs from becoming liable for the content that may pass through their systems.

However, an article by the BBC examines the fact that many service providers are starting to prioritize their own content at the expense of those from rivals. Many countries have started or are considering blocking Voice-over-IP (VOIP) traffic in order to protect the phone companies from competition. For example, this summer reports from Germany indicated that Vodafone had begun to block VOIP traffic, treating the popular Skype program as “inappropriate content.” On the other side of the coin, Canadian cable provider Shaw now offers a premium VOIP service that promises to prioritize Internet telephony traffic for a monthly fee. In some countries the government itself is getting involved in putting forth legislation to restrict certain types of traffic.

The implications for the consumer of this Balkanization of the Internet are scary indeed. In the guise of offering “premium” services, the networks are trying to set up a model where they can control what kind of content gets priority service for distribution, or even gets blocked completely. The implications for freedom of information are enormous.

By Jeremy Reimer, Ars Technica on Om Malik