Well, yes, they are allowed full bandwidth at their point of service, but each person's bandwidth is combined as the signal gets closer to the ISP's central distribution point and if there are enough high bandwidth users in a given part of town the result can be painful when trying to watch a choppy news clip, etc.

I work with networks as well, and I believe that the ISPs must prioritize the traffic types in order to give good service.


Here is an example.

Many people receive their phone service over their Internet connection. A real-time voice conversation will not tolerate delayed or lost packets but a file download doesn't care if the data comes in bursts as bandwidth becomes available. They can (and I'm sure do) invoke QOS (Quality of Service) rules that allow the full bandwidth to everyone IF it is available. These rules will slow down the less important traffic to preserve the time sensitive traffic, but when there is no time sensitive traffic, the traffic that was slowed down earlier can be allowed the full available speed. It is a necessary prioritization. Without it, things like your Vonage service would be useless.

Now, if an ISP is picking and choosing content from a competing service that they want to purposely limit or restrict, I am heartily against such restrictions.

Unfortunately, law makers aren't computer engineers and over-simplify things as they make the rules causing undue complexity on the part of companies attempting to comply.

The idea of taxing e-mails is a good example. Many companies don't use the ISP's mail services. What would I do if they invoke such a tax? Count my e-mails and send in the tax since I operate MY OWN mail server? That would be unmanageable and costly to try and quantify the usage for tax purposes.

So, yes, prioritize by traffic type, but don't prefer one vendor's content over another...

__________________
02 S500
92 500SL
92 400E (Sold)
87 300E (Sold)
83 300D Turbo (Sold)
75 300D (Sold)
74 240D (Sold after 20 years)