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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No Subject Given
if google were to be surcharged, then that invites lower rates for me and room for better competition. however, i imagine price fixing would occur, and there's a lot of folks that can only get service from one high speed provider. so back to how it benefits the consumers? just those few that have two+ different cable providers and dsl providers available
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Devil's advocate
I don't think I heard anything about them blocking any service. But if they can get Google to pay to make my consumer experience better, more power to them. Google is awash in cash anyway. I'd rather they pay than me to get "enhanced service". If they can get the latency out of my Vonage account I'd be happy not to pay.
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?
I think we are forgetting something: Google, Yahoo, CNN, BBC, etc all pay a internet provider for getting their bytes sent to us anyway.
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!
You all know as well as I do that a big (greedy) corporation is not going to budge the consumer's price if they actually do start charging Google, et. al. for bandwidth.
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
Lower rates and better competition? This will be just like the cell phone companies, exclusive deals i.e. certain content to certain providers. As for competition, now it becomes pay to play, where would amazon or google be if they had to pay in the beginning?
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
EVERYBODY knows whatever extra cash they get from Google/consumers are NOT going to go to lowering our bills.
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
I believe that the problem here is that the ISP's are seeing the internet as a broardcast medium where the various websites are broardcasting their content through the ISP's network. To put it simply the ISP's think of websites like TV advertisments: the websites are broardcasting on the ISP's network to sell a product so therefore the websites should pay the ISP's for the privilage.
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
There is definetely a requirement to have the companies that use Internet to conduct their business to pay for the service Amteus Normal Ramón Leonato 2 17 2006-01-11T17:17:00Z 2006-01-11T17:17:00Z 1 248 1366 Amteus 11 3 1611 10.6626 Clean Clean 21 MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Tabla normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-sty le-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0pt 5.4pt 0pt 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0pt; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; fon t-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} There is definetely a requirement to have the companies that use Internet to conduct their business to pay for the service. If many companies are making good profit from the Internet then why should they not pay for the services that the Internet is offering this companies.
There is also the Internet for the people, a way that has made possible communication between people that before was not available. For example I work in a Uk company, a href="http://www.amteus.com/">www.amteus.com that has developed a product to provide Secure IM and VoIP services to enterprises The Amteus Secure Communicator and is providing a service to enterprises that the public can get for free in AIM or a href="http://yahoo.com/">Yahoo or Google. They provide the service taking into consideration the security and privacy that corporate communications require and charge a fee for it. There should be a way that the Internet scenario can achieve the accessability for the private user that he requires for his personal communications and at the same time a situation in which the Internet when used for Business pays a price relevant to the profit making activity that the corporate user gives to the Internet. In this case QoS and other relevant features for a business like security and privacy should be part of the offering. Ramon Leonato a href="mailto:Ramon.leonato@amteus.com">Ramon.leonato@amteus.com Amteus Plc