Technology Review Article

Most places around the United States have an incredibly limited number of ISP’s from which to choose their internet service. This means that a few big players control the pricing and the actual content that passes through their bandwidth. However, in a number of other countries including Spain and Uganda, private companies and individuals have worked on peer-to-peer networks that provide fast internet while usurping the prices of enormous corporations. This technology could disrupt the internet service provider market by providing a similar service at a substantially lower price. If so, this would cause current players in the market to actually compete instead of largely just divvying up the service geographically. This would also result in a significant step for net neutrality proponents because big ISP’s would no longer be able to monitor data so closely.

How else do you think that delivering internet through a peer-to-peer connection might affect the market? Do you see any negatives?