Is This The Beginning Of A New Era?

Sep 26
06:11

2006

Alex Cleanthous

Alex Cleanthous

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This article discusses the issue in the United States congress between Internet content providers, such as Google and eBay, and phone and cable giants, such as AT&T and Verizon.

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The phone companies are proposing to offer premium-priced delivery services to offset their multi-billion dollar investments in broadband. How this would work is that the phone companies would charge Internet content providers a ‘fee’ to provide faster services for website visitors.

The Internet content providers are arguing that if phone companies start charging extra for content delivery that it would create a ‘two-tiered’ Internet,Is This The Beginning Of A New Era? Articles with many upstarts being priced out of the market.

But what does this really mean?Most Internet users have little or no patience when it comes to waiting for a page to load, especially if they have broadband. Any successful website owner knows the importance of having fast loading web pages.

If this bill is passed, will every website owner be forced to pay fees to phone companies to ensure their websites load quickly? And if they don’t pay the fees, what kind of a difference would it make?Will it apply only to larger content providers like Google, eBay, iTunes and Amazon? Or will it apply to every website owner online?And if it does apply to all website owners, how will that affect the landscape of the Internet? Will prices or products and services online increase to cover costs?Even though this issue is currently in the United States, the Internet is a global medium, and any changes to laws in relation to content delivery for website owners will eventually be felt by Internet users all around the world.