> Although one that has a basis in discussions that have been ongoing on the
> fact that Internet access is uniquely subsidized to allow it to have
> unlimited access for tiny set fees. Unlike cell companies, long distance
> companies and basically every other form of telecommunications which must
> pay for access to the local phone infrastructure on a per-minute basis,
> Internet Service Providers get to connect essentially for the cost of local
> phone service.
Huh? ISPs and NSPs pay for transit in terms of bits/time. Most end-user access is of the "unlimited [time] for a flat rate" model, but that is unlimited time at a FIXED bandwidth. If I'm a Mom & Pop ISP that needs a T-1 to resell to my dial-up customers I am going to pay for the 1.15 MB/sec (hopefully that is just my max, and my NSP bills me based on some percentile of the actual transit I use) and this bill will be different (larger) than if I just wanted a T-1's worth of bandwidth in phone lines to make local calls.
It is correct that I don't pay long-distance carrier fees for my T-1, but that makes sense because I'm not using the long-distance telephone switching system. The telephone switching and internet transit networks are two completely different beasts and as such have two completely different billing systems. For one, the telephone system is highly centralized whereas internet transit is de-centralized, with high-tiered providers doing a lot of the routing (akin to telephone switching).
The notion that the gov't would tax individual emails and/or individual bandwidth use is absurd; it would be impossible to implement and all too easy to hack.
> If that subsidy, which is paid for by local phone users (essentially a
> regressive tax for the benefit of Internet users), there would be the
> equivalent of a "bit tax" for the time it takes to upload email from your
> computer.
Are you saying that my telco uses part of the monies from my phone bill to pay for its internet transit, or do you mean that gov't taxes on my telco service are being re-distributed to internet carriers?
> There have been periodic efforts to end that subsidy which have helped spur
> the "modem tax" and "bit tax" rhetoric and fake hoax emails, partly as an
> ideological weapon I think to intimidate Congresspeople getting panicked
> calls and thereby dressing any end to the ISP subsidy in the cloak of a "tax
> increase."
The nice thing about emerging technologies is that they offset the internet cost increases we are seeing. My DSL bill is $39.00, essentially twice what I pay for this account (dial-up and shell), but the bandwidth is about 200 times as much as the dial-up.
Matt
-- Matt Cramer <cramer at voicenet.com> http://www.voicenet.com/~cramer/ PGP Key ID: 0x1F6A4471 aim: beyondzero123 yahoo msg: beyondzero123 icq: 120941588
Damn the rules, it's the feeling that counts.
-John Coltrane