Facebook, Google, Youtube, and more are parts of the internet that most of us consider fundamental. A lobby group sponsored by the European telecom corporations are pushing for a bandwidth use fee which would force these companies to pony up for their internet activity. Sounds like a bad idea.
Cnet says that the proposal was submitted by the European Telecommunications Network Operators Association to the Internet Telecommunication Union. Internet backbone operators have up to now, have arranged mutual agreements with one another to allow traffic to flow freely.
This proposed legislature would change all of that, forcing companies to negotiate individually. It could cost companies like Google billions of dollars ever year. And it could also hamper the growth, and access to the internet for normal users.
The sender-pays framework would likely prompt U.S.-based Internet services to reject connections from users in developing countries, who would become unaffordably expensive to communicate with, predicts Robert Pepper, Cisco's vice president for global technology policy
[Cnet via Slashdot]
