Telco's As Toll Takers: Will E-Tailers Be Next?
This morning's Wall St. Journal's cover story by Dionne Searcey and Amy Schatz is about how telephone companies are gearing up to charge fees to the major Internet content providers - the likes of Google, Vonage and others - for providing high-quality delivery of content over the Internet.
The phone companies envision a system whereby Internet companies would agree to pay a fee for their content to receive priority treatment as it moves across increasingly crowded networks. Those that don't pay the fee would find their transactions with Internet users -- for games, movies and software downloads, for example -- moving across networks at the normal but comparatively slower pace.
If the phone companies are seriously thinking they can insert new toll booths on the Internet highways as this story indicates, why wouldn't they also be thinking of attempting to charge online ecommerce e-tailers for delivering their customers to them? Not just bandwidth fees - but participation in the percentage of sales volume conducted over their pipes. Visions of shopping mall lease arrangements come to mind.Yikes!
For another look at this issue and what the phone carriers seem to be thinking, see this post from last month by Doc Searls.
Add your comment... (note that all comments are reviewed before they're published)