November 04, 2005
Who Should Pay Whom?
It's been around the blogosphere. SBC's CEO Ed Whitacre (pictured) calls the application providers "freeloaders." See, for example, the post at Techdirt. The idea is that the application providers should pay the access providers -- SBC for instance -- for access.
But isn't this backwards from the other popular distribution model? What about cable TV? Imagine Comcast telling Disney that it must pay to use Comcast's cable lines. No, in the cable TV business, the cable company pays the content company. Comcast's cable lines have no value without the content. So, perhaps someone should ask Mr. Whitacre why his situation is any different.
Posted by Doug Sauder at November 4, 2005 06:58 PM