Paying Your Own Way on the Internet

The European Telco Union has just recommended the economic model for the internet proposed earlier in this blog space by yours truly. To wit: those who flood the internet with content should pay based on volume. After all, it's their cost of distribution.


Why should some companies pay to transport hard goods via air and rail, but others pay nothing if the content happens to be electronic?


As a former programmer, I know that software is written efficiently if bandwidth has value. On the flip side, if the bandwidth is free, then who cares how inefficient the product is?


This is aimed at the major network hogs at Apple, Google, and Facebook, who enjoy artificially high profit margins because their major resource - connectivity - is provided to them at no cost.


Simply put, those who create the demand should foot the bill.