The FCC is planning new net neutrality rules. And they could enshrine pay-for-play. - The Washington Post

[streiner at cluebyfour.org (Justin M. Streiner)]

On Sun, 27 Apr 2014, Rick Astley wrote:

> That amount of data is massive scale. I don't see it as double dipping
> because each party is buying the pipe they are using. I am buying a 15Mbps
> pipe to my home but just because we are communicating over the Internet
> doesn't mean the money I am paying covers the cost of your connection too.
> You must still buy your own pipe in the same way Netflix would. I covered
> this scenario in more detail in my post "What Net Neutrality should and
> should not cover" but if you expand on the assumption that paying for an
> internet connection also pays for the direct connection of every party who
> you exchange traffic with then you have a scenario where only half the
> people connected to the Internet should have to pay at all for their
> connection because any scenario where people simply buy their own pipe
> would be considered "double billing".

The size of the pipes involved doesn't change the fundamental premise that 
double-dipping is involved.  Comcast, et al want to be paid twice for the 
same traffic.  The money I pay Verizon every month for my Fios 
connection, by itself, doesn't pay for the rest of their network, but 
take the millions of Fios customers as a whole, and the revenue stream 
is significant.  We'll leave the government-mandated revenue stream 
out of the equation for now.  Just about every ISP, and certainly all of 
the big ones, practice statistical multiplexing - there is always some 
amount of oversubscription at play.  Add up the subscription speeds of 
every Fios customer, and the total ingress/egress capacity of Verizon's 
network, and the two numbers will not be equal - not by a long shot.

While 100G linecards and optics are still very expensive, those costs will 
come down over time.  Even at that, the cost of adding a 100G link between 
Big Network A and Big Network B is at most pennies per customer.

jms