Who Pays For the Internet?

Wow, a simple loaded question if I ever saw one, but here goes the geek speak on this one.

Recently, while surfing the net, I came across notes from someone asking why connection fees are so high. It seems advertising is everywhere now and these fees should be lower, right? The basic answer is, content is expensive and someone needs to pay.

Have you noticed that every major landing page, even the Patch, is advertising multiple "buy from me"-style ads now? These small-looking advertisements are there to pay for connection cost, and editor fees in the case of the Patch. Connection costs are those things like data centers (and staff to run them) along with inter-connect fees to the internet providers.

These fees can be huge when streaming video, or when many people connect to read blogs, news and everything else. Think about all the Internet world traffic and you’ll see Facebook now holds the crown with Google right next to them for traffic use. In the U.S., usage in terabytes of monthly traffic is four billion, and each year that number has climbed by one billion terabytes (1,099,511,627,776 bytes) to a 2012 estimate of five billion.

OK, those numbers are huge, and here is the weird stuff: our biggest use increase is from cell phones. Yes, that’s right, those little helpers have driven up the cost of the Internet, along with everyone streaming more videos and photos. The Internet is estimated to within five years transport more television-style content than over the air waves.

My crystal ball can see everyone watching TV via the Internet and paying even more for internet and less for TV connections. So we will get to swap TV cost and just add it to internet cost? I guess that’s a good thing maybe we finally get to select the commercials, or even skip them all together. Now won’t that be nirvana. So keep surfing, maybe I can finally get rid of those Shamwow commercials!

CAW (Cool Application of the Week) – Tweaking your Windows.

Ultimate Windows Tweaker, from the geeks over at thewindowsclub.com, has always had the best tweaking tools for Windows. I use it for auto login and controlling the look and feel of Windows in general. Give it a try, you’ll be surprised what you can change.