So it was recently my birthday and one of my darling children bought me a Roku system. Now Roku for those of you who are not aware is a neat little box ... and I do mean little like 4" x 4" .. that you hook to your TV and then to your home network and it streams video from your Netflix account to your TV. Very cool. You need a Netflix account of course but I had one of those .. and the box is a one time charge. Something like 12,000 titles are currently available and that number is growing. HD is also available.
So, what does this have to do with Net Neutrality? Well ... Time Warner .. my ISP and several other popular broadband ISPs like Comcast and AT&T are starting to make noise about some of their customers using to much bandwidth. Seems like some of us are piggies and are using up bandwidth and TWC and the rest are so concerned that they think they need to do something to protect all the rest of the folks. Why, those people are downloading illegal movies and pirated music .. must be it .. they should be charge extra for their excessive use. Ya ... TWC and AT&T are worried that all their customers don't get a full share. Hey .. ya don't think that it might be more like them being concerned that others are selling content over their network do ya? I mean they would not be concerned that I can have access to 12,000 "on demand" selections via my Roku / Netflix deal for a small fraction of what it costs me to get at their pitiful list right? Heck, recently TWC can not even get their "on demand" to work ... My grandson likes some shows that are available only on demand at my place ... somedays they are there , others days they are "un available" ... sort of goes against on demand doesn't it?
So ya .. TWC wants to charge me for my excessive use of bandwidth .. but here is what I suspect ... that in their pricing scheme ... your purchase of a move say from Amazon unBox, downloaded to your Tivo will cost you ... but purchase the same movie from one of TWC's Pay-Per-View channels and I'm betting it won't get charged to your data use .... So they get around , sort of , the net neutrality idea by saying they are just charging for bandwidth use but the concern has to be if they are going to favour bandwidth use of thier own content .... Time will tell I guess.
In the meantime I encourage all of you to contact your federal representatives ... there are bills currently in the house addressing this. The OpenInternetCoalition has a lot of info as does the site SaveTheInternet. The President-Elect sounds like he is interested in keeping the 'net open for all ... like I say .. time will tell.
