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Google Won't Pay Bell South

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the blackmailers-never-prosper dept.

grandgator writes "Google has offered a clear response to Bell South's proposal to charge content providers an additional fee for access to their network: They won't pay. In an email, Google's Barry Schnitt told the folks at networkingpipeline: 'Google is not discussing sharing of the costs of broadband networks with any carrier. We believe consumers are already paying to support broadband access to the Internet through subscription fees and, as a result, consumers should have the freedom to use this connection without limitations'"

5 of 483 comments (clear)

  1. Biting the hand that feeds you by Nerdposeur · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Why would Bellsouth charge Google? Without Google (and other useful sites), nobody would subscribe to their internet service. We're paying to get access to the internet, and they're complaining because our access is costing them money. Sounds like a problem with your business plan to me.

    What might make more sense would be a pay-per-use plan, where you pay a flat rate for X amount of bandwidth or whatever and more if you use more. But of course if customers don't like the complication, they will choose another ISP.

    1. Re:Biting the hand that feeds you by gstoddart · · Score: 4, Interesting
      What might make more sense would be a pay-per-use plan, where you pay a flat rate for X amount of bandwidth or whatever and more if you use more.


      What, like this??

      BellSouth already sells connection packages, with varying degrees of bandwidth etc. I'm sure someplace in the fine print is a bandwidth cap and corresponding charges for overages.

      What they think they can do now, is charge google on top of charging their customers -- in theory so Google can be guaranteed their stuff will reach a Bell South customer without any degradation -- you know, "nice kid, shame if he hurt himself on the way to school" type stuff.

      This is exactly why Google has just basically shrugged off what they had to say and shut the door on any talks.

      Bell South is trying to play a shell-game whereby they charge the customer for a certain bandwidht, and then charge the provider to ensure they will be delivered at speeds close to what they've promised/charged the customer.
      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  2. The worst case scenario: by Control+Group · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What I fear more than anything else in this whole "tiering" push is the following:

    BS eventually implements a tiered QOS policy. Google responds by saying, "fine. You charge us for the pipes, we'll charge you for the content that makes them useful." Cue the lawyers, who huddle up, then spit out a cross-licensing agreement such that BS pays Google exactly what they charge Google for the pipes. Google goes away happy; nothing has effectively changed. BS goes away not particularly happy with Google, but in a position where they absolutely can demand a net positive cash flow from content providers with less market clout than Google.

    Consider VOIP: there are enough players in the VOIP game, and it's a small enough market, that no one company has the market leverage to demand much from BS. At the same time, a fairly small change in BS' service (a little bit of lag here, a little bit of jitter introduced over there) will result in completely destroying the VOIP company's ability to serve customers.

    It'll end up being the same thing as the way large companies wield their patent portfolios. It means everything goes on just fine for the big players, but the little guys get screwed in the process.

    I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that Google doesn't cave on this, even if BS offers up a cross-licensing agreement. Here's hoping "don't be evil" covers this.

    --

    Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
  3. Google's counterproposal by tgibbs · · Score: 5, Interesting

    We have given your proposal the attention that it deserves, and offer the following counterproposal:

    We will allow you to continue to offer our service to your customers, at no additional charge to you, and you will save the immense amount of money that it would cost you to explain to all of your customers whey they can no longer get through to Google, and why they shouldn't switch to another internet provider that does offer Google access.

  4. Re:Way to Stand up for us all by lastchance_000 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Given the details in this story: Feds seek Google records in porn probe, I'd say they are definitely not evil. At least not at the moment.