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Well why did Telecom drop that aspect of the DSL pricing plan?

Obviously (at rates of up to $0.15/MB for over-cap traffic), Telecom is trying to have us believe that it costs a lot of money to bring data in from outside NZ's borders -- but what about that which originates locally?

Surely, since Telecom owns the entire network -- right up to the DSL plug into which your modem connects, the cost for carrying local traffic is absolutely minimal. Indeed, Telecom already make a snot load of money in some cases because they're charging local ISPs for bandwidth anyway.

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Of course some would consider varying traffic rates based on whether it's local or international to be an act of discrimination -- well if Nigel Horrocks (speaking on NatRad) is to be believed, this is something we may have to learn to live with.

In his regular NatRad spot, Nigel reported that some ISPs are considering sites that generate lots of traffic an extra "service fee" for allowing their customers to connect.

Imagine if Xtra told TradeMe "you have to pay us a monthly fee or we won't allow our customers to connect to your website".

What could TradeMe do?

They could complain and bitch to various authorities about the situation but, ultimately, Xtra could simply "degrade" access to TradeMe such that it wasn't actually denying service, just making it uncomfortably slow.

Of course I'm not suggesting that Xtra (or any Kiwi ISP) would do this -- but the word is that there's a groundswell of such talk in the USA.

If such a suggestion grew wings, it would effectively require the content producers to partner with ISPs in order to guarantee satisfactory levels of service to Net-users.

Now, if the painted scenario happened here in NZ, you and I would probably tell the ISP to get stuffed and change providers. However, we have to remember that the vast majority of Net users would probably blame the website concerned and complain to them -- while the ISP was smiling all the way to the bank.

As DSL prices fall (albeit slowly), could we be on the verge of a power-play between popular sites and those who provide access? Could big ISPs be preparing to charge a "popularity tariff" for access to those sites?

Tell us all and see what others have to say in The Aardvark Forums

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