With perfect timing, two cellular-service companies are proposing a plan for wireless carriers to monitor usage and charge extra by the kind of site or service visited. The proposal by wireless suppliers Allot Communications and Openet comes right before the Federal Communications Commission meets to vote on the latest plan for Net neutrality.
A private PowerPoint presentation by the companies to an industry seminar was leaked late last week. In it, the companies describe the burden of carrying such sites or services as Facebook, YouTube, Skype or BitTorrent where revenues and traffic are “decoupled.” In their scheme, Facebook users would be charged an additional fee of two cents per megabyte, Skype users three euros monthly, YouTube users 50 cents monthly for a limited version, and Vodafone users would not be charged an additional fee. Vodafone is a customer of both Allot and Openet.
‘Happy Hour’
The plan also calls for encouraging usage in a off-peak, uncharged “Happy Hour.” There’s also a provision for “split billing,” in which revenue from a streaming movie is split between the Internet service provider and the movie service. Currently, the movie service receives the per-movie or per-month user fee, while the ISP receives a monthly fee for Internet service, regardless of what is watched or used.
The vision offered, which resembles cable TV’s tiered pricing arrangement, is exactly the kind of dystopia feared by advocates of Net neutrality. Not only would a carrier be able to pick and choose which sites or services would cost more, but it could favor its partners or subsidiaries in ways that hurt competitors. Vodafone, for instance, could offer a streaming movie service with no additional fees for customers, while YouTube or Netflix users would have to pay more.
The current Net pricing model is not unlike that of a common-carrier utility, such as a…