On 29/11/10 3:45 PM, Aaron Wendel wrote:
I don't think it's unreasonable to expect customers to bear the cost of their provider doing business.
You don't think it's unreasonable (and I don't think it's unreasonable), but most US consumers *do* think it's unreasonable. They would like to get their internet service for free, or for as close to free as possible. They are happy to watch ads in order to get content for free, and they would love to see an ad-supported (or subscription supported for special content) service with free or nominal "ISP charges". If one of the big "eyeball" networks can push their network costs onto a major content provider it will nudge things towards this business model. It has been my opinion for many years that eventually we would find market forces lowering the price consumers pay and raising the price content providers pay until the consumer cost *is* free, or very close to it. This could be the first step... And it's a push back from the ESPN360/ESPN3 model where the content provider was forcing the ISPs to pay extra to get the content on their network... Does anyone have data on how well that's working for the ESPN 360 / ESPN3 system? What is happening now between L3 and Comcast also reminds me of the dial-tone settlement deals in the 1990s. The big telcos thought they could push small telcos out by making it more expensive to place calls (paying a fee to the telco that "terminates" the call) and less expensive to receive calls (receiving the termination fee). They mistakenly thought the startup telcos would go after consumers (who typically place more calls than they receive) and they didn't think about startup telcos going after ISP dial-up services (which receive more calls than they place) and then being forced to pay those startups settlement fees for all the calls their consumer customers made into the startup telco's ISP customer's modem banks. We don't have an interstate telephone settlement system or PUC to "decide" what the rules will be for settlements between content providers and eyeball providers. I believe that in the end it will come down to market forces and which group can better marshal customer angst to their side when packets don't flow freely between these two types of networks. jc