Internet will go the way of Pay TV, aka cable

The Internet is free. Applications are free. The people have won!

Baloney. The Internet is about as free as cable TV.

No one seems to talk about the fact that we are already paying for the free Internet. What do you think you’re paying for when you send your monthly check to an ISP for a high speed Internet connection?

I pay $42.95 per month for the Internet which gives me 6Mbps performance. For $52.95 I could get 8Mbps and if I lived in a major city, which I don’t, I could get 16Mbps for about $67.95.

Gee, that sounds like the Internet is actually costing me money.

At those prices should I be grateful that Google gives me free productivity applications? Or that I can watch the funny parts of the late night talk shows on YouTube?

My feeling is that I should get something for my money.

Okay, so if we think this through, what’s next?

Well, we have two roads to go down. Up until now the Internet is following the same business model as broadcast television. The shows on ABC, NBC, CBS, are free and paid for by advertising dollars. That’s road one. And there is a lot of money out there for that.

So how then do you account for the success of cable, aka pay TV.

For one, most of the free shows suck, and cable offered better programming. Secondly, they offered current movies, uncut for the price.

By the way, have you noticed the movies you now get from HBO for free? How many times can you watch Alien, Alien 2 and Alien 3?

Now not only do you pay for a monthly subscription you pay again if you want to watch a movie made in the 21st Century.

This over the long run is what will also happen on the World Wide Web.

Road 2: The really good programming is going to cost. Probably using the subscription model.

But wait a second, subscribing to hosted, Internet applications? Isn’t that happening? I think it’s called SaaS [software-as-a-service].

Please stay tuned.