During this MBA I have learned all about economics, marketing and cool concepts like arbitrage, crowdsourcing, two sided markets and so on and so forth. But I learned that everything eventually becomes a commodity. And so it has happen to the ISP providers.
No one seems to realize that we have to connect using a tool and I don’t mean Internet, I mean cables, FO, Microwaves, VHF, HF take your pick.
Today we really don’t care who is giving the service, we just connect to it and pay a monthly fee, like water, gas supply it has become a utility. So with this access we get to enjoy the internet as whole and we are online 24x7. We blog, we use the cloud and all of its services and we basically depend on it.
We enjoy this because we enjoy having internet neutrality that is: “Network neutrality (also net neutrality, Internet neutrality) is a principle proposed for user access networks participating in the Internet that advocates no restrictions by Internet Service Providers and governments on content, sites, platforms, on the kinds of equipment that may be attached, and no restrictions on the modes of communication allowed.
The principle states that if a given user pays for a certain level of Internet access, and another user pays for the same level of access, then the two users should be able to connect to each other at the subscribed level of access.” (Wikipedia.com)
But wait. This is too good to be true, is in it? Yes it is!!!
So the ISP are basically trying to make a new business model, charge for what you have access to, basically like a TV Cable if you want to see the ESPN1 or 2 or n you have to pay.
Imagine that in the internet, you would have to pay more to see Google or Netflix. If that happens, what’s going to happen to the so call cloud and all its services and possibilities?
The FCC tried to had a saying in this and just gave up
Google is huge player in this and the risk of having them partner up with a ISP or just becoming an ISP (already happen) is scary to say the least.
I just wanted to share a little bit of politics and regulations in this Hi tech world we are immerse.
Pricing based on consumption is an idea also being pushed in the mobile market. I understand the reason for trying to get consumers to pay for what they use, but I question how feasible it will be to implement. It seems to me that without some form of reward, it will be difficult to get users to move to a tiered plan now that they have an all-you-can-eat plan. Especially with online services like Hulu eating up more bandwidth consumers will be wary of limiting themselves. The more likely scenario is like the one being used by Varizon where if you would like to upgrade the line to achieve higher speed, like upgrade to Fios, then you agree to pay a higher fee. It will be interesting to see if AT&T and Varizon can make these tiered data plans work.
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