Net Neutrality

Net Neutrality doesn't really, in my opinion, get the press it deserves. Here in Anguilla I use Caribcable and I've had a host of problems with my internet when I've done things other than surf the internet. When I called the first person I spoke to said, quite adamantly, no we do not restrict connections etc. but I'm not an idiot (most of the time) so I asked to speak to an engineer who then said well yeah we 'manage' peer-to-peer traffic. He said this was in an effort to curb illegal file sharing.

So I said to him, well I want to download things using Utorrent that don't infringe copyrights and more importantly I purchased 2 gaming consoles both of which use P2P connections for online gaming. Neither of which work because of your restrictions, the gentleman said he would monitor my connection and see what could be done. One week later nothing had been done, so I called back and got another lady, one who seemed aware of the restrictions but seemed fine with BSing me. She tried then to explain to me, which I find rather amusing, that people can hack my files using P2P and give me viruses and to protect me they need to restrict my P2P connections and bandwidth. She informed me that this protection is relaxed between 11pm and 6am.

RUBBISH, this is where net neutrality comes in, they should just provide the connection they advertise and I pay for. No one is paying to surf the internet, if all I wanted to do was browse web pages I would expect I'd pay a lower rate to have my connection severely gimped. The simple fact that these restrictions are removed off peak tells me that its a bandwidth conservation method more than anything else. I mean if it was to stop piracy and protect me from viruses as they seem to think I'd believe then why remove the restrictions at all?

If it was my home that I lived at that connection would be gone in a hurry but I have no choice in the matter so I'll call them back again and try to reach that engineer, to see if I can have something done.

Update:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/charter-will-monitor-customers-web-surfing-to-target-ads/index.html?ref=technology

This is the type of Garbage that just needs to STOP.