Pay me for reading this post!. I may not be joking... since this may happen in the near future for US citizens. According to the latest report 'major phone and cable companies released white papers that outline strategies to transform the free and open Internet into a billable revenue-generating machine. According to an article in The Nation, 'industry planners are mulling new subscription plans...establishing 'platinum,' 'gold,' and 'silver' levels of Internet access that would set limits on the number of downloads, media streams or even email messages that could be sent or received'.

If you want to break easily into the lucrative internet business, the prominent winning formula is 'Provide high value to the users for free of cost'. When the content providers (like Google, Yahoo...) are charged by the phone companies for delivering their content, then obviously they would impose charge on their users to pay the phone companies. The problem with the phone companies is, when users are paying them for using their pipes to access internet( The charge we pay for Net access), why the content providers are not paying them, who are gaining revenues from the users by delivering contents through their pipes. Though it seems to pay them a double price, phone companies are trying to generate money from it. This kind of tough rules will definitely hinder the growth of internet and the game would look ugly when you demand the users to pay them for sending an E-mail. It is just like pressing the rewind button in the technological world.

It will be a restricted access to users and you can't expect 'Breaking news' from companies like Google and Yahoo on their new venture and thus will hinder the flow of creativity. This could also lead to direct and indirect job losses. As Internet serves as the medium of knowledge sharing, it impacts the growth of invention. The denial of paid service is quite evident in today's Internet, as you and I rarely or never have paid it.

If the internet goes to the private parties then the Government should accept another monopoly in the internet business, as AT&T did in Telecom. Monopoly in Internet will have adverse effect on the daily-life of the society as 'everything is online today'. If a private company holds the lines in a state, then it can start a News website and make it available for free, whereas the other sites will be a paid one. Then, as every thing is paid, users tend to go to that particular free news site and thus may end up in a manipulated (favorable) news about a particular (political) party who may have backhanded the phone company. It's left to your thoughts about the adverse effects of a monopoly in any segment.

Though this model is not yet implemented, there are chances for a Government to adopt this, if the ruling party chances upon a considerable gain from the model. To help ensure that their 'vision' succeeds, the phone and cable lobbies are now engaged in a political campaign to further weaken the nation's communication policy laws. Both the Congress and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are considering proposals that will have a far-reaching impact on the Internet's future. Hope I continue to write and you can also read it freely!


On the bottom line, this news is strengthening the rumor about Google. As I wrote in one of my previous posts, Speculating Google's venture in creating a new backbone for the Internet .It was buying the cables laid by companies during the late 90's amidst the boom, which later turned into a bubble and it busted.If the rumor is true and phone companies succeed in their proposal then 'Google would be the happiest company'. Read more....

Category: Interesting News!,Technology!