ISP guarantees net neutrality
16 May 2008 | 08:59 BST
They can take away our bandwidth, but they'll never take our freedom
A NEW ISP is trading on the bandwagon that it will guarantee punters' net neutrality.
Copowi aims to capture the US's customers' interest by claiming it has a neutral network. The outfit is marketing itself as a "social enterprise" instead of a traditional business, and sends free Ubuntu CDs to its punters.
Currently the outfit only offers a service in 12 Western states, but wants to eventually become international.
It claims that the telcos want to "privatise the Internet" because they can use it to make big bucks. Copowi wants usage to be unrestricted and traffic will not be shaped, throttled, or otherwise prioritised.
Cynical hacks at Ars Technica have quizzed Copowi boss George Matafonov on how long his outfit will remain net neutral when a couple of P2P people suck up all the bandwidth. They also asked how, since Copowi has to lease lines from the dark evil telcos, they can guarantee a free interweb.
Matafonov claims that telcos provide unregulated access if Copowi is willing to pay for the bandwidth.
The price of this freedom is huge. Arse points out that in Colorado users will have to pay $33.95 a month for a 256Kbps DSL connection. This is the most expensive service outside Kazakhstan. µ
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