steven n fettig's Jitterin' Thoughts

After Doc's post of the lame carrier head examination, I felt it finally necessary to lay down a quick quip on my thoughts of a tiered internet. I hope to holy hell that everyone and their mother fights this horseshit of an idea. Yes, I am so pissed at the idea, I'd like to drop a few more expletives off this keyboard, but I won't (click on the above link to get an idea of what I'm referring to). I've been mulling writing about my short experience of owning an ISP (which I've decided I will over at Cogito Ergo Sum) and one of the essays I wish to write is how ridiculous concepts sometimes come out of providers like AT&T (former SBC) or Verizon's mouth. The concept that we will be charged extra to access content on a public network depending on where it is coming from is sheer lunacy. My customers and in turn, I, paid a very precious penny for the bandwidth we were using. It was up to my main upstream provider, Global Crossing, to make sure they had adequate peering and bandwidth, not to mention, that I was paying fair market costs for my connection. As you move up the levels of the internet (customer -> provider -> provider's provider -> backbone), each person has paid for that capacity along the way. There are no free rides. If Verizon is concerned about the fact that they are losing their asses on $15/mo connections, maybe they had better reevaluate the way in which they price out their services. It is not my job as a website owner (or a webhosting company, for that matter) to figure out what you need to charge your customers to give them adequate bandwidth to my site - it is your job.
I really hope this idea dies a short, yet very painful death. If it doesn't, I simply don't see how the average person is going to understand, let alone use, the internet. It makes me want to get back into the business if only to show the idiots who think this is a good idea that money can be made without such nonsense.