According to a speech given at a Westminster eForum on Web 2.0 this week in London by Jim Cicconi, vice president of legislative affairs for AT&T, the internet is set to hit maximum capacity by 2010.

The primary reason for his assessment is due to the increased viewing of video content online.

“The surge in online (video) content is at the center of the most dramatic changes affecting the Internet today,” he said. “In three years’ time, 20 typical households will generate more traffic than the entire Internet today.”

According to ZDNet’s article quoting Cicconi, Video will be 80 percent of all traffic by 2010, up from 30 percent today.

This bodes well for online content creators, but also raises the urgency for those very content creators on the issue of pushing for governments to inact net neutrality to prevent filtering of content.

The big businesses that provide what is termed “The Backbone” of the net, want to establish a tiered, prioritized system that excludes those independent content creators who don’t fall under the providers profit making vision.

Content creators argue that Net neutrality should be legislated in order to protect consumers and keep all Internet traffic equal. Network operators and service providers argue that the Internet is already unequal, and certain types of traffic–VoIP, for example–require prioritization by default.

As a content creator myself, I find this news disturbing as it could mean a lack of original content that is being created for online viewing would have restricted bandwidth applied in favor of other content that falls under the umbrella of one of the large internet backbone providers.

Net Neutrality NEEDS to be legislated - especially here in the U.S. where it seems big business dictates policy in the nations capital instead of those elected officials serving the general public.