Bloglines - Internet Pricing Models

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Emergic Rajesh Jain's Weblog on Emerging Technologies, Enterprises and Markets

Internet Pricing Models Kevin Werbach asks: The traditional telecom pricing model is to charge for the basic service (voice connectivity), and you get other things on top for free. That model has largely been replicated on the Internet -- users pay access providers, and applications like Yahoo!, Google, and Amazon.com have to find ways to monetize something other than access. A good part of the dotcom bubble was due to the fact that Web-based companies couldn't "monetize" their traffic, and charging users directly was off the table. The companies that weathered the storm and prospered figured out alternative revenue streams. (Value-added services for Yahoo!, contextual advertising for Google, and transactions for Amazon.) Now, along comes the broadband Internet. We seem to be proceeding in the same direction, with application providers finding indirect ways to monetize their usage. But what if the connectivity were free, the applications were free, and users paid only for the add-ons? Could that ever work?