The following article implies that prioritization of Internet traffic will become increasingly common, and that ISP's are looking for revenue streams from given Internet services that might encourage them to prioritize one Internet service over another. The article does not mention VOIP specifically, but clearly it should have. IMHO, ISPs are going to increasingly look to individual VOIP carriers for revenue sharing relationships in return for prioritization of their traffic over their networks.

[quote]
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 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."[/quote]

Source: http://www.marketwatch.com/news/yhoo/story...54B748D6CF26%7D

This trend should be good news for Skype vis-a-vis its competitive advantage, and bad news for VOIP carriers with no economic model to outlast the stream of fees for PSTN interconnection (because that stream will dry up eventually).

Sure not the same, but we already can pay more for a faster internet connection.

And i agree, Skype and a lot of others are making money by using hardware provided by others for free.

And, of course, i don't mind that those who pay more get more. This is competition.

The only thing i mind: i don't want a downgrading of the service my ISP is offering me now! Like the local television company (Telenet - also broadband provider) did some months ago: they introduced digital television, they ask a payment for it (of course), and diminished the offer or choice of number of channels for those not taking digital television, without diminishing the price for this service! :evil:

This has a cost implications for VoIP providers and thereby the consumers too. The reason why we have free PC-to-PC calls and some free PC-to-phone calls is the fact that these providers dont have to pay to deliver their trafic using the internet. Once using the internet to deliver traffic is no longer free the cost advantage of voip over pstn might be lost.

Jeff Pulver has now picked up on this topic (a tiered Internet) with reference to Mark Cuban who was quoted above.

http://pulverblog.pulver.com/

A tiered Internet is on the way. Bandwidth providers have the capability of fast-tracking certain services. It may be illegal to slow down a given service, but the effect of speeding others up should amount to the same thing.

I suspect that bandwidth providers will look to Skype and other VOIP carriers for a cut of their revenues to prioritize their traffic. Skype should be very pleased to go along with this arrangement because most of its competitors will not have the capability to match. (sidebar: this is one of many reasons why VOIP is never going to become a balkanized, albeit integrated, SIP ecosystem).

You and I will of course pay for our prioritization in the end (through various eBay paid services), so you might argue that it is not in our best short term interest. I believe however that it is most definitely in our best long term interest because it makes the entire Internet more efficient. There are huge inefficiencies because of providing bandwidth on an "all you can eat" basis.

[quote=garnet_stone]It may be illegal to slow down a given service, but the effect of speeding others up should amount to the same thing.[/quote]

Exactly. It amounts to a restrictive practice that while perhaps not in violation of regulatory practice as it currently stands, should be outlawed immediately.

Unfortunately, thinking about the developed world, I'm afraid only in America would what by any standards at best amounts to extortion, albeit dressed up in an ultra-thin veneer of spurious arguments blatantly designed to circumvent the law, go unchallenged.

[quote]Bill Smith, chief technology officer at BellSouth (BLS), justified content charging companies by saying they are using the telco's network without paying for it.[/quote]

No they’re not. Content providers pay their own ISPs to deliver services onto the net. And end users pay their ISPs for access to the internet’s content, not to particular on-line services.

Naturally many ISPs are unprofitable, but the solution is to let competitive forces in that market run their course, not to allow the private sector to extract cross-subsidies from completely separate markets and distort competition there.

And taken to its extreme, this could without doubt lead to de facto corporate censorship – a sort of Stalinist broadcasting of white noise into undesirable elements of the radio spectrum – destroying the important democratising force the internet represents.

This is the slippery slope.

[quote=SkypeMatt-UK][quote=garnet_stone]It may be illegal to slow down a given service, but the effect of speeding others up should amount to the same thing.[/quote]

Exactly. It amounts to a restrictive practice that while perhaps not in violation of regulatory practice as it currently stands, should be outlawed immediately.

Unfortunately, thinking about the developed world, I'm afraid only in America would what by any standards at best amounts to extortion, albeit dressed up in an ultra-thin veneer of spurious arguments blatantly designed to circumvent the law, go unchallenged.

Content providers pay their own ISPs to deliver services onto the net. And end users pay their ISPs for access to the internet’s content, not to particular on-line services.

Naturally many ISPs are unprofitable, but the solution is to let competitive forces in that market run their course, not to allow the private sector to extract cross-subsidies from completely separate markets and distort competition there.[/quote]

I'm afraid you don't understand the future that is being envisioned. I currently have just two broadband alternatives. Both of them are of the all-you-can-eat variety and therefore I must choose one, and depend on it for everything.... for browsing and entertainment, and communications such as VOIP, and running a website server. Each of those services requires a very different kind of traffic configuration, so none of my services are optimized. Very inefficient.

ISP's are trying to reshape their businesses more efficiently. A few years from now, I'll probably have double the alternatives I have now, and I'll subscribe to more than one. I'll have one ISP for my servers, another for personal (browing and entertainment), and a third (probably wireless) for VOIP. Each carrier will be capable of all IP services, but they will be optimized for just some. If I pay for just as much bandwidth as I use, it ought not be any more expensive than it would be if combined into a single pipe as it is now. If I have to buy three separate all-you-can-eat services, it's going to be far too expensive. The trick therefore is to create a revenue model that is tied as much as possible to actual bandwidth consumed. As for VOIP, revenue sharing with carriers will be helpful in this regard.

Now here's a wild prediction: I foresee a day (far from now) when there will be a free ISP, probably wireless, dedicated to Skype traffic. They'll make their money by revenue sharing with Skype.

[quote=SkypeMatt-UK]And taken to its extreme, this could without doubt lead to de facto corporate censorship – a sort of Stalinist broadcasting of white noise into undesirable elements of the radio spectrum – destroying the important democratising force the internet represents.

This is the slippery slope.[/quote]

You could be right, but in the US at least the censorship will be driven by market forces rather than regulation.... If a fatter/faster/cheaper broadband pipe is offered to me minus the content that I'm not interested in anyway, I'll buy it. Besides, you could just as easily argue that the Internet as it stands now is a centralizing force, and that the future I've described is more democratic.... and free.

[quote=garnet_stone]I'm afraid you don't understand the future that is being envisioned. [/quote]
I’m afraid you don’t understand competition and market segmentation. :lol:
[quote]A few years from now, I'll probably have double the alternatives I have now, and I'll subscribe to more than one. I'll have one ISP for my servers, another for personal (browing and entertainment), and a third (probably wireless) for VOIP. Each carrier will be capable of all IP services, but they will be optimized for just some. If I pay for just as much bandwidth as I use, it ought not be any more expensive than it would be if combined into a single pipe as it is now. If I have to buy three separate all-you-can-eat services, it's going to be far too expensive. The trick therefore is to create a revenue model that is tied as much as possible to actual bandwidth consumed. [/quote]
I personally think you are underestimating ISP’s fixed costs, but in any case that is exactly the sort of thing that could be envisaged when I said market forces would and should provide a long term solution for sorting out the industry's profitability issues.

But clear, transparent service limitations are an entirely different thing to effectively double charging – or in my view more accurately blackmailing – bandwidth intensive content providers, which seems to me is the gist of the scheme floated by the BellSouth exec.

[quote]You could be right, but in the US at least the censorship will be driven by market forces rather than regulation[/quote]
I agree, and that is precisely what I find objectionable; there’s no level playing field.