Flawed logic
I hate to say it but the analogy between paying for VoIP and paying termination fees is entirely flawed for several reasons.
Some broadband subscribers are subjected to a "cap", while others are not. personally, I'm with an ISP which is good enough to honour it's "unlimited" promise. Regardless, the point of the matter here is derived benefit and marginal cost. The vast majority of users will never get near reaching their ISP's bandwidth cap, and thus the derived benefit and marginal cost from receiving a VoIP call for these customers will be completely nill. Whereas receiving a phone call using a normal phone will be subjected to a fixed cost which is itself the marginal cost and the derived benefit. Equating direct monetary cost against inclusive bandwidth from a broadband connection just doesn't make any sense in the context of this article and scale has little to do with it either. The only way you could make that arguement stand would be if ISP's started charging for calls made over a VoIP protocol, and the ISP's aren't about to shoot themselves in the foot with that gun.
Mine's the one with the Economist sticking out of the pocket.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
