A few weeks ago on my flight to Florida I took in an interesting article. It was an article that had me thinking. Just today, I see blog webosphere is all over the same topic. Here is the summation of the issue at hand:
So in order to get their cut from all this newfangled content, the telcos and cable companies have come up with a "tiered" system for the Internet similar to that of cable TV (the one that makes you pay through the nose to watch The Sopranos). They would charge not only their subscribers but also the content providers themselves--Google, Yahoo!, iTunes, and every other site that could afford it--for "super-fast" service. A news content site like The New York Times would sign a high-dollar agreement with an ISP for that fast service, making its competitors less appealing to the 80 percent of Americans who get their news online. How slow will rank-and-file Web sites be in that system? How easy will it be to read the liberal blogs or download the indie podcasts? That would be up to the ISPs.