Research and Markets has announced the addition of eMarketer's new report "The Bandwidth Debate: Video and Net Neutrality" to their offering.

Video is creating huge increases in bandwidth usage. It currently generates more traffic in the US than was transmitted across the entire Internet backbone in 2000. While the Internet is not about to collapse, as video becomes the primary online delivery vehicle for entertainment, news and sports, the system will strain.

The Bandwidth Debate report analyzes the impact of the growth of online video content on the Internet transmission backbone, its availability and cost.

Looking at the future of the Internet, none of the players seem happy. ISPs insist that the costs of building out Internet capacity should not fall solely on them. Furthermore, the proliferation of professional video content online: mainly TV shows and full-length movies, threatens the business model of cable companies, who are also major ISPs in most of the US.

On the other hand, companies invested in the TV business (networks, studios and cable providers) as well as major Internet players (Google, Microsoft and Yahoo!) and smaller sites all hope to carve out a share of the potential profits of video and they are nervous, too.

In that light, the debate over network or Internet neutrality, Net neutrality, for short is a power play, with involved parties using bandwidth issues as negotiating tactics for divvying up the pie.

Of course, as corporations scramble, consumers could be collateral damage. That is because several ISPs are looking to limit their customers' bandwidth usage through techniques such as monthly download caps (often called throttling) and differentiated service tiers. The problem could even spill over to online video and advertising.