I am still surprised that a better protocol for proximity favored peer connections wasn't developed for BitTorrent and other P2P systems to maximize performance by connecting to peers on the same or close-by networks.
It is actually being developed, in the IETF ALTO working group. And BitTorrent Inc. is actually an active contributor of the current draft.
Starting this late they should offer something better than Apple's app store - they don't: a recipe for failure? Hope not.
In about two centuries Nokia has shown to be pretty good at catching up on lucrative trends: it changed from a paper maker to cell phones and network equipment vendor, passing through the electricity business and rubber manufacturing sector. If selling applications on mobile phones will prove to be an important business even after first year's hype, I will not bet on a failure.
Very easy to find the value that the ISP will charge,
It is actually very hard, and mostly dependent on the level of competition among ISPs. In areas where people can buy access from one provider only -- or where a well established cartel exists -- ISPs will be happy to partner with RIAA to calm down those bandwidth hogs who demand to actually use the bandwidth they pay for. However, in normal markets RIAA will be asked to cover the losses caused by customer churn; I suspect it will be pretty expensive, especially if you consider that per-year revenues of the whole entertainment system are made in less than one month by the telecommunication industry.
The truth is that the BitTorrent folks are not playing ball with ISPs.
The very same people driving the development of uTP at BitTorrent Inc. are also pretty active in IETF, both pushing their protocol for standardization (guess who's chairing the LEDBAT working group) and discussing with ISPs ways to leverage topology information for optimizing peer selection (ALTO WG). They are a very imporant player in today's Internet and it seems they are not afraid of playing ball with the big guys.
Kiss your keyboard goodbye!
