Telcos Continue Double Talk On Two-Tiered Service Idea
from the getting-bolder dept
The big telcos continue to talk up their ideas for a two-tiered internet. However, it appears they're beginning to learn that the original strategy of simply claiming that Google and other popular internet services should pay them wasn't going over very well with the masses. So, the new strategy is to claim that nothing will be blocked, but these agreements (read: payments) are still "beneficial" to consumers. How? That part is left out. It's certainly unlikely that AT&T will be lowering anyone's bill if they actually did get a Google or a Vonage to chip in some cash for lines already paid for by consumers. Meanwhile, of course, the telcos seem to completely ignore the fact that a big part of the reason why they can actually sell broadband connections in the first place is because of these services they're now so eager to block.
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Devil's advocate
Plus, as much as I'd like to keep low prices, you have to admit that it doesn't seem quite fair to expect my price to stay the same as my usage (of totally legal movie downloads) increases. So if Google ponying up some money offsets my prices increasing, let freedom ring.
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Google(++) pays?
The current network business model has both the sender (Google) paying for bandwidth to the net, as well as the consumer of those bytes (me).
And now the Telco's are considering charging them/us for more? (and please: don't think that if telcos want to charge extra to Google, that they won't charge extra to Mr. AOL-User as well).
I sure would like to see more of a rational business case for such a fee/surcharge/tax/penalty for using telco services.
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Yeah, right!
But I am interested to see if someone other than me recognizes the double charging of the companies that use the bandwidth if this happens. Like someone already said: they're already paying someone for the bandwith - THE ISP! The next thing you know is that the RIAA is going to find a way to charge for the air that is moved by the speakers of your stereo when you put a cd in!
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Re: No Subject Given
As for lower rates, my cable has more commercials than ever and less customer service reps(at least that speak english). All of the above were supposed to help with rising costs. Yet my cable still goes up each year.
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lower costs? aw come on
Once they realize that they CAN charge more (for something they do already), it is just assumed it is just going to be another little surcharge on the ever expanding list of "services".
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Internet as a broardcast medium
There are several problems with this.
1 As techdirt has mentioned various times before the internet is a comunications medium not a broardcast medium as some have seen it.
2 The TV stations selling advertising rights give the access to the network out for free to the users with the advertising suporting this free service. with the internet the customers are allready paying to access this service.
This could work well in a modified sence though. If Google pays for this then the users should be able to access Google without paying for the data transfer and with any bandwith used being added on top of what the customer is already paying for. This could possibly work well in some situations such as with MMORPG's. The company runing the MMORPG's could pay to allow their users to acces the game, esentially paying for the data used and extra bandwidth for the game to use.
The thing here though is that only one side can be paying for the same service. IF google pays for the internet service you should not have to pay for it and if you pay for it then google shouldn't have to but having two people pay for the same thing is just plane wrong.
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Two tiered Internet and Enterprise Services
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