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Research and Markets has announced the
addition of eMarketer’s new report “The
Bandwidth Debate: Video and Net Neutrality” to their offering.

Video is creating huge increases in bandwidth usage. It currently generates more traffic
in the US than was transmitted across the entire Internet backbone in 2000. While
the Internet is not about to collapse, as video becomes the primary online delivery
vehicle for entertainment, news and sports, the system will strain.

The Bandwidth Debate report analyzes the impact of the growth of online video content
on the Internet transmission backbone, its availability and cost.

Looking at the future of the Internet, none of the players seem happy. ISPs insist
that the costs of building out Internet capacity should not fall solely on them. Furthermore,
the proliferation of professional video content online: mainly TV shows and full-length
movies, threatens the business model of cable companies, who are also major ISPs in
most of the US.

On the other hand, companies invested in the TV business (networks, studios and cable
providers) as well as major Internet players (Google, Microsoft and Yahoo!) and smaller
sites all hope to carve out a share of the potential profits of video and they are
nervous, too.

In that light, the debate over network or Internet neutrality, Net neutrality, for
short is a power play, with involved parties using bandwidth issues as negotiating
tactics for divvying up the pie.

Of course, as corporations scramble, consumers could be collateral damage. That is
because several ISPs are looking to limit their customers’ bandwidth usage through
techniques such as monthly download caps (often called throttling) and differentiated
service tiers. The problem could even spill over to online video and advertising.

See the original post:
Report: The Bandwidth Debate: Video and Net Neutrality