Pay-per trail

Though it's now a controversial subject of debate, the notion that carriers should charge varying prices for varying levels of network service quality has long been dreamed of as a remedy to what ails broadband economics. Opponents of the idea say quality-of-service fees will kill the Internet golden goose by choking off the openness that allowed it to grow. Carriers might respond, “What golden goose? According to RHK, IP traffic grew 87% per year between 2000 and 2004, while our revenue per bit dropped 45%.”

The pay-per-bit model was always deemed too complex or counter-intuitive to foist on a public that was just beginning to understand Internet service. And by the time the Internet had grown, users were already wedded to the notion of flat-rate broadband. They would never pay for broadband the way they do water or electricity, it was agreed, and the fact that a growing number of municipalities wanting to offer broadband now frequently liken it to water and electricity hasn't seemed to have altered anyone's thinking.

It's too bad for the telcos, then, that they didn't create tier-based revenue streams earlier — perhaps in the pre-broadband days — or it might be more acceptable now. For example, perhaps they should have offered two tiers of service installation: one at the standard price, which required customers to wait in their houses all day, and a premium service, in which the installer agreed to meet you promptly on your lunch hour. Or how about two tiers for call-center service? What if, for a reasonable fee, those who don't like being left on hold could instantly end the wait, jumping to the front of the line like a FastPass holder at Disneyland? That idea sounds less outlandish since BellSouth started charging extra for non-telecom tech support in an Atlanta trial last month.

As telcos rebel against the reduction of their networks into mere paved roads, the public may grow accustomed to all sorts of new broadband models.