Aswath Rao in his highly readable blog has discussed the ploy of AT&T wanting to charge content with smells of its real desire of milking VoIP providers in the name of ’sucking bandwidth’.



Aswath correctly writes about the technical part of the voice’s ‘bandwidth-hogging theory’ as circulated by vested interests.



I must admit I am a big fan of Aswath and I guess he knows that too. However, the answer he seeks can be found in the comment on his blog by PhoneBoy. In fact, it seems that he actually articulated it in the best possible way, quite in line with my thoughts.



If that has some moneymaking potential owing to people’s willingness to pay (even it is for the time being) why would a company restrict itself from exploiting the opportunity?



However, I might add here that the excuses being given to charge a premium on what essentially be a free service (really, I think it that way) should be resisted at any cost. No, the world may be full of fools, but then there are some who won’t take the crap lying down.



How would ones belonging to the ‘Voice-Sucks-Bandwidth School of Thought’ respond to Aswath when he says that a wideband codec like Speex requires only about 40 kbps one way?



Read Aswath Rao’s blog