Newspapers and TV stations are content providers, only a few ISPs are content providers. ISPs are more "packet movers" than anything else, so it comes down to who can move packets the best, not who has more appealing packets. And this boils down to technical competance. I can only see "Internet Content" providers banding together.
That and the fact that ISP owners seem to have larger ego's to protect, for some reason. You can no longer claim "I have more bandwidth than you do." It's a pity, really. It prevents local traffic exchanges from being as popular as they might, as well.
Dave
Local exchanges will play a VERY big role if national providers go with a use sensitive rate. I think the "spirit of cooperation" is present in many ISP but takes a second chair alot of times. I've seen direct competitors pool together in a few isolated cases and generally it was in an effort to drive to another market (other cities in thise case). Also as some "ISPs" departmentalize into Network providers, Content providers, etc., more cooperation will follow. In alot of the marketplaces there are literally fueds between competing ISPs (some techinical some business) and it is REALLY hard to convince bean counters why they cooperate with someone who would just as well see you go out of business. Scott -- smace@neosoft.com - KC5NUA - Scott Mace - Network Engineer - Neosoft Inc. Any opinions expressed are mine.