The Christian Science Monitor has an article about the emerging two tier Internet. It is a good overview of the political and technical issues that are driving this problem. The big broadband access companies (e.g. the phone and cable firms) are determined to wrestle control of their customers away from the open Internet.

From their perspective, it makes perfect sense. They built their networks, and companies like Google are making billions by carrying traffic over them--those roads are not free, by the way. Google has to pay huge amounts of money for the bandwidth needed to make all those searches happen quickly. But not enough of it trickles back to the phone and cable companies, in their opinion.

It is unfortunate that the issue has become so polarized. You end having to take the side of the access companies (not entirely admirable firms) or the side of companies like Google, which are also not entirely admirable.

But the real impact is on communities and economic development. What if every road in your community was privately owned? And there were tollboths on every road into town? Everyone and every business that wanted to come into the community had to pay a toll--would that be good for economic development? Of course not. But that's where most communities are right now.

There is another way--build public roads and let all businesses use them. It's a model that has worked for a hundred years.