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Verizon Wants To Charge Gamers More For Their Bandwidth
Gamers are starting to get used to change. Our games aren’t always complete products anymore, as some publishers are more often viewing them as services. Those of us in the United States have grown accustomed to to flat-rate internet, but even that could be headed for a shift.
IGD News Service reports that Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam wants heavy users to pay more. This would include those streaming high definition video and downloading video games. "It's only natural that the heavy users help contribute to the investment to keep the Web healthy," he said. "That is the most important concept of net neutrality."
McAdam waived off concerns that Verizon, which petitioned against the now-abolished net neutrality rules would mean his company would throttle or block traffic to some sites. "We make our money by carrying traffic," he said. "That's how we make dollars. So to view that we're going to be advantaging one over the other really is a lot of histrionics, I think, at this point."
[Source: Network World via Business Insider]
Our Take
Whether McAdam and his company would or would not throttle or block traffic is irrelevant. The issue is that Verizon, Comcast, and Time Warner have the power to make that decision.
As for increases to ISP charges for heavy users, I expect that to happen. Apart from net neutrality rules, the Internet is more rapidly becoming a privately run utility. I don’t like it, but I also see the business reality of the situation.
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