I have just recently started using mobile broadband, delivered by British behemoth BT. The speed is quite good, although it has a few hiccups now and then. But something strange happened. Suddenly, I was hindered in visiting my favourite blog at www.copyranter.com and 404 redirected to a BT page. Copyranter is know for its harsh language, and I suspect there is some adult content filter on my account.

BT have not answered my emails yet, and this might just be a misunderstanding, but I think, it is a problem that they block some sites without getting my prior consent and redirect traffic to their own site.

ISPs (Internet Service Providers) have begun offering various online services (hosting, business-portals etc.) and I am guessing that it will not be long before they develop their first search engine. And this is a problem, because the heavier the ISPs online presence are, the lighter their incentive to “help” out their online competitors will be. Suddenly, you might experience downtime on some of the major search engines, or a weird redirect to your ISPs own service. And your freedom of choice on the Internet can be compromised. The neutrality of the net might be compromised. It cripples free competition.

My hope is that there will be brought attention to this problem before it has become a harsh reality.

Peace,
Ras.

PS. “B” is now up in the SEO dictionary

Tags: Internet, ISP, Net Neutrality

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 30th, 2008 at 4:26 pm and is filed under Discussion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.