Look who's paying now: increased Internet access fees will be the key to better business service - Internet/Web/Online Service Information

Home Office Computing, March, 1997 by Peter H. Lewis

Increased Internet Access Fees Will Be the Key to Better Business Service

The chief executive of a new Internet start-up, eager to woo a prospective employee, sent him a job offer via e-mail on the Microsoft Network. Two days later the candidate sent a plaintive e-mail query to the executive asking why he hadn't heard from him. That message arrived another 48 hours later. Meanwhile, e-mail sent via AT&T WorldNet requesting lunch appointments went astray when that service's mail system crashed for hours at a time. Using America Online as a backup wasn't an option, because it was virtually impossible to reach after its move to flat-rate, unlimited access pricing in December.

As businesses depend more and more on Internet mail and Web sites for conveying critical communications, the accessibility of the Internet is of increasing concern. Millions of new users are piling onto the global network, and they're staying connected longer than ever before--creating isolated traffic jams, slowdowns, and even an increase in busy signals and jammed circuits on the nation's telephone system.

Something has got to give, telecommunications experts say. And guess who will be giving it.

As businesspeople who have the most at stake in using computer and telephone networks for important communications, it's a fair assumption that we're the ones who will have to give, in the form of higher access fees.

They're fees that I and others will gladly pay, with some conditions-and one extremely important caveat, which I'll explain.

The Internet as we know it is rapidly becoming unreliable for business-to-business applications, a victim of its own popularity as a new consumer communications medium. As the Yankee philosopher Yogi Berra once said: "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."

Job offers, business plans, and meeting confirmations have no exalted status on the Internet and must compete for bandwidth along with the steamy chat sessions, junk e-mail, and rants about the Trilateral Commission. And that is how it should be on the most democratic communications medium the world has ever known.

But there's nothing stopping me from paying extra for overnight express deliveries when normal U.S. Postal Service schedules are too slow. Business owners have long paid handsome fees for leased-line telephone connections. And the airlines make out like bandits when businesspeople have to travel on short notice. That's capitalism at work, and bully for it.

Until recently, however, small businesses haven't had any options for reasonable first-class Internet service-- something more modest than leased lines but more reliable than flat-rate, all-you-can-eat access. This will change in the coming year as Internet service providers (ISPs) and telephone companies weigh their options. They can spend tens of billions of dollars over the next few years to add extra lines, computers, and switches that will boost network capacity to meet rising demand; or they can abandon--or modify--the flat-rate pricing structure they so eagerly embraced in their zeal to get new customers.

We can expect the emergence of many different ISPs, providing varying levels of speed and

service in return for different levels of fees. One provider may adopt the old telephone long-distance model, in which connection rates are higher during office hours and lower at night and on weekends. Another may offer different tiers of service, with a flat-rate, take-your-chances, unlimited-access option for casual users and a more-expensive, no-busy-signal, guaranteed-bandwidth plan for businesses. Still others may adopt the utility model, putting a meter on the line and basing charges on the number of bits sent and received.

Several of the country's largest ISPs, including CompuServe, Netcom, BBN Planet, and PSINet, have already retreated from the flat-rate consumer Internet market to focus instead on business customers. Meanwhile, the Clinton Administration has given its support for the development of Internet II, a second-generation network that will provide highspeed, high-capacity links for the academic, research, and military users who were the first customers of the original Internet.

As soon as business users see the benefits of Internet II for transmitting and receiving real-time video and creating virtual reality simulations, they will clamber aboard, to be followed by the second wave of millions of consumers. At that point, still many years in the future, we'll begin complaining about overcrowding on Internet II and talking about building Internet III.

In the meantime, I'm ready to sign up with the first ISP that will offer me first-class Internet service at a fair price. It has to be better than first-class airline service, however. The airlines offer 50 percent more room in the first-class Cabin for 50 percent more money, which seems fair, but they still lose my bags and cancel my flights.

I'm willing to pay double my current rate of $19.95 a month just to know that I won't get a busy signal when I dial in to get my mail and for some guarantee that the mail I send and receive is not being held hostage by some overburdened server.