Today's Wall Street Journal has a feature article about emerging plans by BellSouth, AT&T, and Verizon to start charging fees to major content providers in order to guarantee "fast" access to/for their customers. There are no exclusives in this particular article, but the mainstream attention is itself noteworthy.

Given the paradox of the best network, I guess this is how Capitalism designs Quality of Service, but it sounds more like extortion to me.

In the article, a BellSouth spokesman whines about the fact that Google didn't ante up for the restoration of DSL service in the aftermath of Katrina and Rita. Give me a break.

Did Wal-Mart and Target pay fees to have debris cleared from the local roads leading to their storefronts? Perhaps; I don't know.

But if there is a silver lining in these pricy network clouds, it may be that the telcos' egos end up energizing the movement toward asset-based telecom.