You were charged once by telecommunications companies like Verizon (phone bill) and your government (tax subsidies) to build the network for the Internet They also built the networks to provide much higher bandwidth than you are getting.
You are charged again for the use of those lines through DSL and Cable. You have to pay a sliding scale for the speed you would like to receive.
Now Telcos want to charge companies who use the Internet more if they want to reach their customers faster. Example, Google would have to pay to be the fastest search engine over a company that could not pay the telco for the speed to compete. Not shedding a tear, yet.
Think of this, you want to start an Internet business. You pay to connect to the Internet to sell your new t-shirts but your customers complain that your site is slower than the Target website. Your servers are idle and your connection is not maxed.
Target would pay more not for the Internet connection but for the speed for others to connect to them. Effectively shutting out small business on the web.
Hasn't it always been that way?
NO, up until now we have on a level playing field where if you paid to be on the Internet you could be relatively sure that the bottleneck would be based on your own capacity and connection speed.
Now, telcos want to charge because sites like Yahoo and Google get lots of traffic. It does not cost the telco anymore to provide the service, Google is just using what they pay for. Effectively, this charges businesses for a third time.
Why you should care about this:
When government allows businesses to punish companies for being successful, it always hurts the small business. Businesses should not be extorted because telcos want a piece of the action.
read more digg story
