May 26, 2006
Web Toll
Remember when all we had were 28.8 modems for dialup to some ISP. Remember when we moved to 56K Modems and everything seemed to load so much faster, but only the people who could afford the modem actually had them. That time may be back, but not for the average user at home, but for the business running the website.
Welcome to the brave new Web, brought to you by Verizon, Bell South, AT&T and the other telecommunications giants (including PopSci and CNN.com’s parent company, Time Warner) that are now lobbying Congress to block laws that would prevent a two-tiered Internet, with a fast lane for Web sites able to afford it and a slow lane for everyone else.
Not only will this be a hindrance to most people who try to go to their favorite but poor website, and all of a sudden people stop going to the site because it takes to long to load. After that the company who is predominantly web-based will no longer exist because their primary medium is preventing them from getting traffic and business.
I understand the following comment that Christopher Yoo, a professor at Vanderbilt University Law School said, but I disagree with it.
consumers should be willing to pay for faster delivery of content on the Internet, just as many FedEx customers willingly shell out extra for overnight delivery. “A regulatory approach that allows companies to pursue a strategy like FedEx’s makes sense,” he says.
The only problem is there is a major difference between FedEx and the Internet. I feel that people who use FedEx to speed up the delivery process but they are not depending on the Internet to function in their jobs and lives. However, the internet has grown a lot bigger in the past 10 years making it a value that average people have grown to require in their daily lives.
