Cashing-in – Closing out future market growth?

I’m glad to see the web’s dad, Tim Berners-Lee, speaking up on the plans by some telcos to create a two tier internet, (charging content providers who want their high-speed video delivery to get traffic preference for example).

See BBC news article here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5009250.stm.

Obviously an ongoing and complex debate, but I think beyond the ethical/moral issues that Sir Tim has, it would be bad news for commerce and bad news for marketing. The rush to squeeze money out of the network by charging for quality content delivery I believe would simply put the brakes on the full potential of the space. It would certainly create unhelpful inequalities for many of the more inventive and creative uses (esp user-created content) out there.

For that reason I can only see it as a bad thing for marketers in the medium and long term, even if it might seem attractive to us to get preferential delivery of video content right now when many people are still at best surfing at dsl speeds.