In the past, Verizon lobbyists have left the option of a metered plan open, prefacing it [...]]]>

No sooner than the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) talked up formalizing Net Neutrality policy than did Verizon CTO Dick Lynch appear a week later and talked smack about metered bandwidth options. Hmm, could these items be related? Hmm…

In the past, Verizon lobbyists have left the option of a metered plan open, prefacing it with the thought of “We don’t need it since FiOS just slays cable company infrastructure.”    The party line out of Verizon last week was “We can’t continue to grow the internet without passing along the cost to someone” and the idea floated about at the Fiber-to-The-Home conference was a tiered approach with people paying more for the amount of bandwidth they consume per month.

Currently, Verizon DSL and FiOS customers pay a flat rate per month for the speed they get delivered to their home, paying much more for the very highest tier of service than the entry level and mid-range speeds.

For those of us with gray hair, this isn’t the first time Verizon has invoked the idea of paying per byte.  It has come up with dial-up and mobile broadband, so this not really “new.  But the current crazy talk is Verizon’s way of signaling its discomfort with the FCC’s latest proposals.

One also might wash to consider the potential for anti-trust considerations if Verizon and the cable companies introduced tiered pricing at the same time net neutrality legislation came into the fore.