Consumers Fear Consumption-based Internet Billing

ISP customers worry about paying for content they don’t ask for—and some they do.

The fact that some broadband ISPs are starting to meter Internet connection usage has a number of our readers convinced that the die is cast for usage-based billing--and if it comes to pass, consumers absolutely do not want to be billed for unwanted and/or unrequested traffic. This opens a Pandora's box of issues, the most perplexing of which is summed up by one reader's comment: "If the ISPs start metering and charging for usage, then advertisers should be billed for all the unsolicited content that is delivered to users. . . . Can you imagine what would happen to Google in this type of environment?"

Good question! Usage-based charging could upend a number of established business models and have widespread ramifications. For example, as another reader points out: "What about Netflix? How many people are going to want to pay for the service AND then pay for the bandwidth to download? The same goes for any web-delivered service, but video-on-demand, with its large downloads, in particular. Are they going to stand and see their business model destroyed by metering?"   

What are your thoughts?

You can see our blog and comments about metering and "unexpected content" here.