Slashdot Mirror
Web Usage-Based Billing On Its Way
tripleevenfall writes with this excerpt from SFGate:
"The days of watching movies on the cheap via the Web may soon be over. Time Warner Cable and U.S. pay-TV companies are on the verge of instituting new fees on Web-access customers who use the most data. ... U.S. providers have weighed usage-based plans for years as a way to squeeze more profit from Web access, and to counter slowing growth and rising program costs in the TV business. While customer complaints hampered earlier attempts, pay-TV companies are testing usage caps and price structures that point to the advent of permanent fees. ... Cable's best option is to find ways to profit from the online shift, said [analyst Craig Moffett]. If the companies were to lose all of their video customers, the revenue decline would be more than offset by lower programming fees and set-top box spending. 'In the end, it will be the best thing that ever happened to the cable industry,' Moffett said."
I can attest to this. Google recently offered the small town I work in a deal that would have paid for the construction of an entire wireless infrastructure, and 3 years of support to get the whole town Wi-Fi coverage. They only had to take up support costs after 3 years.
The town declined because Google refused to filter the connection. They were so afraid of somebody might see a tit that they turned down FREE town-wide wifi coverage.
I hate living in the Bible-belt . . . .
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
I was around in the eighties when having a link from one computer to another meant that you had to pay usage fees. By the minute actually. Making large transfers of data were simply cost prohibitive, your average youtube video would have cost you hundreds if not thousands of dollars at those old rates.
When people began to talk about having a world wide internet connection they got absolutely no response from the telcoms on the issue simply because, the idea of changing their service fees from a "by the minute" to a flat rate was unreasonable. They simply refused. Then after it had been shown that data could be sent in different (beyond hearing) frequencies, without affecting their normal voice business, they still balked. Opting instead to offer their lines at the same rate for whatever usage.
In the end it literally took an act of congress to force the telcoms to lease their lines out for internet use. Not by the megabyte or by the minute.. but the whole lines. Believe me there was more than just a little resistance. Since then the telcoms have been fighting to regain the ground they lost when the internet was created, and to be able to charge you ten or a hundred times more for the same service they provide now.
In fact you are right.. there are no established laws on the books that protect the "internet" as we know it.. from being chopped up and charged for by the website. But the it wouldn't be the "internet" , and the telcoms would have no incentive at all to upgrade the available infrastructure when they could simply charge you more and more for the ever expanding pieces that they can chop off.
once more into the breach
...I also no longer buy it either on CD or as downloads, because I object to the removal of my fair-use rights, and the unnecessary DRM schemes on both CDs and downloadable music that put artificial limitations on what devices I can use them with. It's been a decade or more since I last paid a cent to anybody other than private artists selling their own music.
Other than the Sony BMG's rootkit, there hasn't been widespread DRM employed on CDs. LIkewise, Amazon and other on-line e-tailers have been vending DRM-less MP3s for years now.