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Bhewes may be right--but ESPN is special. Most companies, including YC companies, would have to pay. Only the very very few could charge the carriers.

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Smaller companies already do pay when they buy bandwidth. I don't see the economics working for AT&T and Verizon to charge startups. Maybe some kind of tier bandwidth general cheaper bandwidth and "network optimized" bandwidth for some additional fee.

But beyond that I see the internet playing out like cable but on a larger scale. A simple winner take all game with almost all network capacity dedicated to a few services.

The case centered on the question of whether those companies would have to pay twice--once to buy bandwidth from their own ISP and then again to get through a toll to the end user, paying originating ISP then the terminating one.

Interesting, I would suspect then that AT&T and Verizon would go after the ISPs to pay up.

Though this also makes me wonder when AT&T and Verizon will each buy search engines.

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