Packet Shaping: the new Net Neutrality Battleground

Posted By: JD Lewin | Jan 15th, 2007 @ 10:44 AM

If you thought that net neutrality was important yesterday, fire up your blogs because it's getting much more interesting. Daniel Berninger for GigaOm is demanding Packet Privacy and we think he's on to something. We've had a couple things to say about net neutrality before, but we hadn't connected this hot digipolitical issue with packets until this morning. Verizon has been exercising this sort of ability on their EV-DO service for some time, by disconnecting users who push their 'unlimited' service to the limit, or those who use VOIP applications. From Daniel's piece, "The telcos do not claim a right to listen in on calls to enforce the business versus consumer pricing policies. What makes it appropriate to use packet inspection to accomplish the same thing?"