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The shape of packets to come: wireless and wired pricing will be shaped too

It's axiomatic in this industry that you get what you pay for. What that's usually assumed to mean is that the more value you add, the more you can charge, if you're a vendor. Users see it differently of course; the more features that vendors add, whether or not they want them, the more vendors feel able to charge for them.

Of course, if you're in a big enterprise, the prices you pay bear little relationship to those coughed up by most of the rest of the world, but the basic premise of paying for added value still holds.

Or does it? Take a look at the Internet. All that data you push across it, whether emails, TV, audio, big files -- it all costs you the same. Even if your connection is measured and metered, the types of traffic that traverse that connection, over your ISP's network and onto the Internet itself are irrelevant.

But we've just seen, this week, straws in the wind that indicate that this could be about to change.

The network is becoming strained, as demands grow but prices don't. We all push way more and bigger emails over the Internet than ever before, we all pull video off web sites such as YouTube and NetEvents TV (please excuse the plug), but the cost to us remains the same. For a service provider, it's a nightmare scenario.

But this week saw the launch of a bandwidth shaping product aimed at service providers that will allow them to inspect every packet at line speeds. This means that, rather than being a neutral carrier, a service provider will, in future, be able to generate more cash by selling extra peer-to-peer capacity, for example, or to guarantee quality of service for video.

Effectively, it could mean access rationing using the price mechanism. So expect the future Internet to be less neutral -- the technology is here, now.