Spanish telecoms giant Telefonica is considering plans to charge search engines including Google and Yahoo for the bandwith they consume across the network.
Speaking in Bilbao, Telefonica President Cesar Alierta suggested that major search organisations were benefitting from significant amounts of free bandwidth to the cost of telecoms providers.
Telefonica operates across Spain as well as much of Latin America. The organisation considers that its investment in in the network and its ongoing maintenance is benefitting the search engines which are profiting as a result.
In suggesting that things will have to change, Telefonica admitted that ideas to refresh the commercial relationships between networks and search providers had been discussed before, but that market pressures being felt within the telecoms industry are still a cause for concern [Simple Thoughts].
one step closer to become a dumb pipe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumb_pipe
Wow. People will think of anything to try and get more money.
The search engines aren't utilizing the bandwidth for free. Customers who pay a monthly access fee are paying for the bandwidth to access the search engine.
So, what do they want to do? Double dip? They want to charge the customer to get online to use the search engine, then they want to charge the search engine to let the customers reach them.
This impinges on the idea of net neutrality by attempting to only allow already paying customers to access sites approved by the ISP.