Why do we have to pay for internet access??

[deadslow]

Forgive my daftness, but isn't the web simply THERE ALL THE TIME. What is it we are paying for?? (I still can't work out why we have to pay for telephone calls either!)

[agent006]

Maintenence. In the same way we need to pay road tax. The internet doesn't just magically appear overnight then tissssscali want it to. People have to plug boxes in and do lots of complicated geeky stuff.

[deadslow]

agent006 said:

In the same way we need to pay road tax.

So, it will evenually end up as a series of potholes joined together with road works?? My God, its worse than I thought!!!

[agent006]

If the current pricing trends continue, yes.

[mattley]

That's like saying Why do I have to pay for stuff in Sainsburys, after all it's just sitting there on the shelves.

[pjskel]

Well, it is! And if it doesn't get lifted, it'll go bad and be thrown away.

[deadslow]

mattley said:

That's like saying Why do I have to pay for stuff in Sainsburys, after all it's just sitting there on the shelves.

Well, I can sort of understand being asked to (over) pay for stuff that has been grown/manufactured/processed by Sainsburys. But I still don't really see how 'switching me on' costs anything, or adds further cost to the system.

I have always assumed that I paid for this service for the same reasons I pay for a lot of things - those in control of the commodity are liars/greedheads who disguise the simplicity of the product with excessive tech-speak and charge 150 times the real market value (in a proper market consumers have perfect product knowledge) - think Financial Services. But if I'm wrong, thats great.

But how come everyone will soon be giving it away for free.........?

[randlemarcus]

Quite correct, in that switching you on costs a smidgy little bit of server maintenance to ensure that you can log on, and that the ISP knows who you are, and that you are entitled to do so. Then..
add in staff to build, document and maintain the server, and the other servers with all the help files and other things that you look at and go ooh.
Then you add in the "free" modem that they gave you. No such thing as free.. Then you add in the charges from BT for the line tests etc..then you add in the hideous costs of the DSLAM in the BT exchange that lets your modem mutter to the interweb, then the quite frankly scary interconnects to connect the ISP to the rest of the web.

No such thing as free internet, you WILL pay for it sooner or later.

[neil_cardiff]

Woaaahhhh there people....

Before you all get yer knickers in a twist, the internet is by and large free.

What you are paying for is connectivity and transit. This is the to'ing and fro'ing of the stuff you request off the internet.

It costs a feckin' fortune to install and maintain the infrastructure, and its a completely valid business model to want to make money from it.

All the content (apart from stuff you obviously pay for - exclusive content *ahem*) is there for you free, just you have to pay for the way you get it.

Anyone, or anywhere offering Internet ACCESS for free is obviously then allowing you too access this in the way you want - free - but ultimately they'll be having to absorb the connectivity costs somewhere - most likely in advertising somewhere...

HTH clears it up for you

This is excluding all the business models of maintaining web servers etc etc - but you can all work out how that returns revenue - clickthroughs etc.



>> Edited by neil_cardiff on Friday 19th May 08:38