2012 - The End of Internet

The crew at I-Power (net neutrality movement at Ning) had confirmed that Bell Canada and TELUS by 2012 or as soon as 2010, ISP's all over the globe will reduce Internet access to a TV-like subscription model, only offering access to sites that you paid for and for additional sites, you will have to pay extra. These "additional and smaller" sites would then lose all their exposure and eventually shut down, resulting in what could be seen as the end of the Internet.

Dylan Pattyn, who is currently writing an article for Time Magazine on the issue, has official confirmation that TELUS has already started blocking all websites that aren't in the subscription package.

In fact its nothing new as China Mobile has been doing this for a while ie, free GPRS access to their mobile internet portal and pay as you go plan for off-deck browsing. While its a great strategy for infrastructure providers to get more from their access point, its certainly not a good news for content developers. Not only will it discourage content aggregation, it will kill any content aggregation initiatives from the offset. What will the world of internet be without the content??? A boring world just like the existing controlled media.



What can we do?
The reason why the movement at I-Power is releasing this information is because they believe we can stop it. More awareness means more mainstream media shedding light on it, more political interest and more pressure on the ISP's to keep the Internet an open free space. You can join their movement here.

Someday our internet access package could look like this below. It will be sad that our internet which was invented open could one day evolve and turn into a controlled and paid medium.