Paul Kapustka's Blog

(Which will, of course, include snide awards for people who don't know how to mute their phones when on conference calls!) The starting point for background can be today's "Pay for play" piece in the WSJ (subscription required), where the RBOCs show how far ahead they are in this battle by their almost unanimous on-message statements.

To wit (quoting the WSJ story here):

Others include plans similar to those of wireless companies where customers would pay for a certain amount of monthly capacity and then face hefty charges if they exceed it. "Any model that allows the consumer to have more control and more choice makes sense to us," says BellSouth Chief Technology Officer William Smith, who is contemplating the new models but has no immediate plans to implement them.

Mr. Smith often laments the fact that his parents, who use the Internet for only low-capacity activities such as Web surfing and email, pay fees similar to those of heavy users who suck up capacity by downloading music or using BitTorrent, which is used by millions to download movies and other material off the Internet. Overall at BellSouth, 1% of broadband customers drive 40% of Internet traffic, he says. "People who drive cost in the network create additional charges in the network," Mr. Smith says. "If my elderly parents don't use a lot of traffic we ought to be able to create a service plan that meets their needs."

C'mon! Do we expect Mr. Smith's parents to keep paying for all our IRC chats and BitTorrent downloads! Heh heh heh... more to come!