Carriers Eye Pay-As-You-Go Internet  

Posted by Natalie Surace

What would you do if you had to pay for the internet by the byte? Well providers are arguing that this is unavoidable and the only thing holding it back now is the government. This is a really great article, and it mentions Rochester quite a bit as well. Did you know?:

"When Time Warner announced last March it would expand its metered-pricing approach to other cities, including Austin and Rochester, protests erupted. Rep. Joe Messa of Rochester introduced a bill in Congress banning tiered Internet pricing plans, arguing the plan would put his city at a disadvantage for corporate investment."

It talks about what kind of plans will likely be available as well. It will be pricey if you want space and speed.

How do you feel about this new push toward paying for your internet by usage, and what plan would you choose if/when it come to this? Also, what effect do you think this could have on companies that base their business on the ability to sell downloadable items online, such as iTunes?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703816204574483674228258540.html?mod=wsj_share_digg

1 comments

Anonymous   says October 25, 2009 at 12:54 PM

I definitely agree that internet providers will have to go to a tier-based system if they are ever going to remain profitable and provide optimal service for its customers. Personally, I'm not too concerned about the pay-as-you-go system because I would not consider myself a high internet user. I also believe that it is only fair that you should have to pay more if you're using the internet more.

The only problem that I see with implementing plans similar to that of AT&T's it that many people do not understand the terminology that is being used in these plans. For example, I'm sure many people do not know exactly how much 150 gigabytes is or how fast 18 megabytes per second really is.

I do believe that this can be damaging to sites that rely on downloadable transactions such as iTunes because of the massive amounts of downloads that occur daily. This could result in an increased price for the consumer and end up further hurting their business. I think that internet service providers would have to create tiered services for both households and businesses in order to please both markets.

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