It would be nice to put together a spectrum of possible outcomes if net neutrality regulations were completely repealed. Here's what I think.
Peer-to-peer file sharing is gone or throttled way back. ISPs have no reason to support it since it takes up so much bandwidth and there are no stakeholders with enough money/clout to fight back.
Microsoft starts paying carriers for QoS for Xbox to use it as a differentiator against Sony. Maybe they try a similar tactic with Skype but maybe the carriers don't want to go along with that since they have their own voice offerings.
I don't think streaming music services are affected at all. The bandwidth is so low and it's relatively insensitive to latency. It seems like it would be excessively cruel for ISPs to seek out and block arbitrary streaming services.
Maybe video is different? Perhaps they could charge video services (Youtube, Amazon Prime, Netflix) slightly more for high def streaming to subscribers.
Sports. ESPN already has a sort of self-imposed reverse net neutrality thing with ESPN3. Hard to see much changing there. I don't think there really any VC backed upstarts here to speak of either.
Peer-to-peer file sharing is gone or throttled way back. ISPs have no reason to support it since it takes up so much bandwidth and there are no stakeholders with enough money/clout to fight back.
Microsoft starts paying carriers for QoS for Xbox to use it as a differentiator against Sony. Maybe they try a similar tactic with Skype but maybe the carriers don't want to go along with that since they have their own voice offerings.
I don't think streaming music services are affected at all. The bandwidth is so low and it's relatively insensitive to latency. It seems like it would be excessively cruel for ISPs to seek out and block arbitrary streaming services.
Maybe video is different? Perhaps they could charge video services (Youtube, Amazon Prime, Netflix) slightly more for high def streaming to subscribers.
Sports. ESPN already has a sort of self-imposed reverse net neutrality thing with ESPN3. Hard to see much changing there. I don't think there really any VC backed upstarts here to speak of either.