Posted on 01/16/2006 2:00:35 PM PST by abb
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- BellSouth Corp. confirmed Monday that it is pursuing discussions with Internet content companies to levy charges to reliably and speedily deliver their content and services. Bill Smith, chief technology officer at BellSouth (BLS: BellSouth Corporation, justified content charging companies by saying they are using the telco's network without paying for it.
"Higher usage for broadband services drives more costs that we have to recover," he said in a telephone interview.
He suggested that Apple Computer might be asked to pay a nickel or a dime to insure the complete and rapid transmission of a song via the Internet, which is being used for more and more content-intensive purposes. He cited Yahoo Inc.'s plans to stream reality TV shows as an example.
"It's the shipping business of the digital age," Smith said, arguing that consumers should welcome the pay-for-delivery concept.
BellSouth has discussed its idea with MovieLink, a film-download service. He called MovieLink an example of the kind of company that wants customers to have a good experience and would view costs incurred in the strengthening of BellSouth's Internet capacity as worthwhile. Smith also said online game companies are likely candidates for charges.
Over the weekend, Internet entrepreneur and NBA team owner Mark Cuban wrote on his blog at BlogMaverick.com that such fees are critical to the survival of the Internet. "Our ability to consume bandwidth is growing far, far faster than the speed at which it is being added," he said. "The more bandwidth we consume, the more Internet traffic jams we have."
Cuban wants telephone and cable and wireless companies to work out a way to deliver traffic at various levels of service quality. "Yes, that will mean some content will cost more if we want it faster," he conceded. "But that will be our choice."
PBS, NPR expand Web efforts
The Public Broadcasting System announced it will begin publishing a Web log about new media, while National Public Radio is advertising three jobs, one of which is to oversee the creation of a music site.
Media commentator Mark Glaser, recently the author of a weekly column for the USC Annenberg School for Communication's Online Journalism Review, will write the new PBS blog MediaShift (http://www.pbs.org/mediashift). Beginning Wednesday, its coverage will include blogs, RSS, podcasts, citizen journalism, wikis, news aggregators and video libraries and directories. "After writing about blogs and new media as an observer, I'm finally walking my talk," Glaser said, according to a prepared statement.
Meanwhile, NPR's online interest is strong. The network has posted ads on PaidContent.org seeking a multimedia Web designer, an online supervising music producer and a programmer to help make NPR's on-demand content -- that is, podcasts -- available on mobile devices.
Business Week's online column Blogspotting recently published a conversation with NPR's vice president and general manager for NPR Online, Maria Thomas, about the organization's embrace of podcasting. Download an MP3 interview of the conversation here.
Washington Post bloggers just do it
With or without editors reviewing their posts, several editorial staffers at the Washington Post have launched Web logs. The Washingtonian magazine quotes one of the bloggers, Joel Achenbach, as saying he's nervous about how fast his words hit the Web.
He works with two editors for his print pieces, he said, but, when it comes to postings on Washingtonpost.com, he often flies solo. "It puts a lot of responsibility on the writer of the blog," he said. "You have to determine what needs to be reviewed by an editor." The author of Ashenblog (http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/) added, "A lot of the stuff I put out raw."
At least one other blogger at the Post, Marc Fisher, said his work, too, often hits the Web sans editorial review at http://blog.washingtonpost.com/rawfisher/. Jim Brady, editor of Washingtonpost.com, said whether and how rigorously blogs are edited depends on the urgency of a particular posting. "Some are edited before, and others are edited live. But we do put eyes on the posts."
The MarketWatch Internet Daily podcast is available through the Apple iTunes Music Store. Listen or subscribe here. You can also hear it on the CBS Radio network stations.
Frank Barnako is a vice president of MarketWatch, and is based in Washington. He has owned shares of AOL Time Warner since 1995
BellSouth already charges much more for DSL than anyone else. They'll go the way of the buggywhip with this new strategy.
Oh really...
During the dot.com fiasco and the fiber-cable laying frenzy of the mid 90's, Bell South and many others bought the infrastruction for pennies on the dollar, in place, when the less prudent investors and businesses went belly up.
I would love to see an in depth analysis of this "cost" claim.
Bell South stinks. Everybody else is lowering their DSL fees - but Bell South is trying for an increase?
We need more competition down here in the South, folks.
I'm anxious to see how the the use of power companies as ISP providers works out. IIRC, a Texas utility is even now beta testing such a system.
If it works, we'll have more bandwith than you can imagine...
So basically this is extortion. Pay up or your content just might be choked down to a trickle once it gets to our pipe.
Now, you wouldn't want nothin' to happen to it along the way, now wouldya? What's a nickel or a dime compared to, maybe, burning down your business?
-PJ
Here's some more info on BPL (Broadband over Power Lines)
http://www.currentgroup.com/
Sounds good at first, but wait. Who would you submit this fee to? Your ISP? What if you are using your own mail server-would you send your fee to the receipient's ISP?
Hmmm..interesting you say this when BellSouth lowered DSL prices last week.
BellSouth is beginning to implement MPLS. It's equivilant to the 4 digit extension on your zip code. It allows for better traffic prioritization and routing. It's absolutely necessary to give any type of decent quality of service on VOIP and IPTV. What BST is proposing is having content providers pay to get their traffic flagged for better quality of service.
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