Unmetered Traffic and the business model
After stumbling into an article of David Rothman about a biz-plan of some media/cable providers, I have been thinking about the implications of a multi-level charging plan for content. I also have to agree with him, that this might be pure greed by the bandwidth providers.
I understand that, because they experience already, what I (and a lot of other geeks, including Bill himself) have been preaching for years now: the content is the key to an online business. Bandwidth will be available from various sources and will become a commodity (Whisper IT got an article about the connections development in the ISP market online, if you are interested!).
Broadband connections are on the rise and in the tough fight for customers, prices drop like rain and the providers search for new business models. With services like ours, Google Video, Podcasting, etc. the whole Internet moves even faster to CONTENT - and now the cable providers got none to sell. The new pricing model thoughts, which were described by David, indicate that the providers understood, that their cables will decline in profit over the years and that they need to cut a piece of the “content market”.
