Should access to the Internet be completely free?

Nice idea, but not practical.

I'm a telecoms engineer and unless you're going to start a monthly collection for me so I can pay my rent and have a comfortable standard of living, I wouldn't hedge on any kind of free internet. I'm pretty sure the response would be the same from my colleagues around me and in other companies and countries!

Alot of people are blissfully unaware of the sheer amount of work, time, energy and money it costs to keep the worlds Telecoms networks chugging over. It takes alot, let me assure you!

Originally posted by stumason
Nice idea, but not practical.

I'm a telecoms engineer and unless you're going to start a monthly collection for me so I can pay my rent and have a comfortable standard of living, I wouldn't hedge on any kind of free internet. I'm pretty sure the response would be the same from my colleagues around me and in other companies and countries!

Thanks for the background information and views!

Alot of people are blissfully unaware of the sheer amount of work, time, energy and money it costs to keep the worlds Telecoms networks chugging over. It takes alot, let me assure you!

I don't mean to undermine your whole line of work. I hope you are not having a negative tone with me, I was just asking a great question.

The only way for it to become 'free' would be for the ISP to offset the running costs with some other form of income. TV and radio do this by having tons of ads that cost lots of money but have the huge benefits of massive audiences. ISPs have in the past tried to offer 'free' internet that was pumped full of ads, but they failed terribly. The bandwith cost of delivering the ads on top of the clients browser requests is too much not to mention there is always someone out there that will crack the system to bypass the ads.

reply to post by they see ALL


No, I wasn't being negative. Sorry if it came across that way, I was just trying to illustrate just how expensive it is to run all these networks and the work that goes into doing so

Believe me, I'd love to not pay what I do for my broadband myself!

isn't the internet already free? you just pay to get there.

most sites stay up based on ad revenue or sponsorships so you dont have to pay, unless you pay for memberships to services (optional).

more and more places are starting to offer free wifi now so there you go.