Hoi, The American company BellSouth Corp. wants to have organisations pay transport fees for the content they deliver over the Internet. http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7B02432D2D-1EE0-4037-A15F-54...
They have even the affront to say that the Internet end users should welcome this.
This mail is perhaps a bit off what we typically discuss on our mailing lists, but it may lead to us having sharks like BellSouth Corp. knocking on our doors..
Thanks, GerardM
GerardM wrote:
Hoi, The American company BellSouth Corp. wants to have organisations pay transport fees for the content they deliver over the Internet. http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7B02432D2D-1EE0-4037-A15F-54...
They have even the affront to say that the Internet end users should welcome this.
This mail is perhaps a bit off what we typically discuss on our mailing lists, but it may lead to us having sharks like BellSouth Corp. knocking on our doors..
Without having read the entire article, it strikes me as odd that the word 'transit' is not mentioned anywhere.
GerardM wrote:
Hoi, The American company BellSouth Corp. wants to have organisations pay transport fees for the content they deliver over the Internet. http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7B02432D2D-1EE0-4037-A15F-54...
They have even the affront to say that the Internet end users should welcome this.
I don't think this is going to be as bad as it appears. They are trying to charge providers for Quality of Service preferences over other internet traffic. In other words, if you have a time-critical download you can pay Bell South extra money to make sure their network pipeline will carry your content instead of non-paying customers. Or for video delivery to get an extra boost in reliability when being sent over the net.
If this happens I'm sure the Foundation will get some letters describing the services of Bell South, this is not Bell South saying that Wikipedia will not be carried on their network unless the Wikimedia Foundation pays a delivery charge to Bell South customers. The Wikipedia will come through just fine, although from time to time you may find that your connection to Wikipedia content may be still slower than normal from time to time, and this time your ISP is to blame, not the Wikimedia servers.
When sites like Wikipedia are completely stopped from service, I guarentee this sort of thing will end and get a host of complaints from the Bell South customers themselves.
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org