This technology could arm Jihad against VoIP customer choice

Writing on PCWorld.com, senior editor Eric Dahl mentions a technology that frankly, should scare every one of you. Except  those of you who have stocks like Comcast or SBC in your portfolio.

Offered by Mountain View, Cal.-based IP platform developer Narus, it is a type of solution that can detect VoIP packets or deprioritze them to slow down their passage through your broadband Internet connection.

Dahl nentions that "a number of foreign telephone carriers have already enlisted the company's services."

It is obvious to me that such technology has the potential to cripple those VoIP packets from VoIP service providers who are competing with broadband access service providers that also offer VoIP.

I am very much afraid that if deployed by the wrong parties, this solution will represent nothing less than a jihad against VoIP customer choice.

Don't you know the behemoths of broadband access would love this weapon - at the same time they try to outmarket the pure-play VoIP providers such as Vonage, Packet8, VoiceGlo, and others by triple-play and quadruple-play (VoIP, wireless, programming, Internet access) that the stand-alone VoIP companies cannot.