Internet Access Fight Heating Up

A couple weeks ago Nomad posted a story about AT&T contemplating charging major internet companies like Google, MSN and Yahoo fees for accessing the internet. The fight over whether this is acceptable is only getting hotter, with congress (that bastion of level headed thinking) getting involved. This is an interesting debate and I can understand both sides of the argument. The telecom companies have put out a lot of money to create the broadband network that we all use, but on the other hand they're charging intense amounts of money to their customers ($55/month for Comcast residential cable broadband access is a lot of money to pay for internet service and business access is 50%-100% more expensive -- yikes!). The internet companies, like Google and eBay make almost all their money on people being able to have free, unfettered access to the internet, so charging fees for access would severely hamper their bottom line which would in tern be passed on to the consumers. It's like the telecom companies want to tax internet companies for being successful, but then again this is the country where people are seriously discussing taxing the oil companies because they've been successful (I'm still expecting to see them have a really bad quarter soon).

With all this talk about what fees should be paid and by who for the internet it makes the concept of a federal internet network an interesting concept. I haven't done much reading on the current theories surrounding this concept, so I am by no means an expert. I tend to not like the idea of creating a newer/bigger bureaucracy which this would definitely do -- so that's definitely a con to the concept. I'm not sure if it would be the government providing internet service to the whole country or if they would simply control the backbone of the internet and private companies would charge for access -- the second seems to be the more "american" way of doing it. The latter is definitely the best way of supporting the free market and internet access isn't a right provided in the constitution -- unless you categorize it under the pursuit of happiness but that's a bit of a stretch. Yet, our free market economy is more and more dependent upon free trade over the internet, so the more people that can access the internet the more that part of our economy will grow. It could be argued though, that if you can't afford internet service you shouldn't be buying stuff on the internet in the first place. It seems that a federal backbone might be the best idea, but I'm sure there are other better ideas out there - like I said I haven't read up on this subject much.