The splinternet - GE Look Ahead

The splinternet - | GE Look Ahead | The Economist: "Mr Steimle doesn’t see ISPs “actively throttling bandwidth for Internet publishers they disagree with, [as] it would cause a massive backlash”. But the influence could be more subtle. Mr Drossos, Mr Shapiro and others hold a dystopic view wherein large ISPs could wield a disproportionate amount of influence over who gets access to them and what their customers view and read. Proprietary apps, partner services and other contributors to what The Economist has called “mega-sites” could shape cultural and political information, for example.

 This, of course, is the more dystopic view. And it might not occur at all: Services might switch stream altogether and focus on machine-to-machine (M2M) apps for the Industrial Internet and Internet of Things. In an “ubernet”, world, bandwidth providers might exercise most of their differentiated pricing on M2M data flows, which raise perhaps fewer ethical issues." 'via Blog this'