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Even though Comcast customers already pay Comcast to receive those bytes? As others have pointed out above.



Paid magazines often still sell advertising space, same is true for paid cable channels, so it's not unheard of to charge both the "broadcaster" and the "receiver".


But that is a model in which the advertises is "subsidizing" the effective cost to the end user. (Whether or not it's an actual subsidy or just a nice bit of profit for the cable network/provider is anyone's guess.)

Obviously, without legislation, the internet will end up being no different, with Comcast, AT&T, and ultimately high-traffic sites like espn.com nickel-and-diming each other and end users. Sticking to the principles on which the web was (allegedly?) founded doesn't hold much water in a shareholders meeting.

I hate to sound so cynical and resigned to this fate, but left to their own devices this seems like exactly what the big ISP's and sites will do.


I agree that it is very easy for this to lead to a bad situation for customers. But that subsidizing model still applies. You know how much it costs to connect a cable line to a house? That wiring costs 100s-1000s of dollars per house (why FioS went to apartment buildings first). Of course the end users are getting subsidies.




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