BellSouth CEO wants to charge Internet transit fees

BellSouth's CTO Bill Smith plays with the idea of charging Internet companies extra fees to transit through his company's network. He told CBS Marketwatch in an interview that extra usage "drives up more costs that we have to recover." Smith also said that media companies like Apple could be charged a nickel or dime to insure rapid transmission.

In the interview, Smith compared telephone companies to shipping companies of the "digital age". This is not the first time industry executives have advocated charging extra fees. Back in November, SBC's CEO Edward Whitacre said "The Internet can't be free" and that companies like Google or Yahoo would be "nuts" to expect to use the pipes for free.

Humphrey Cheung was a senior editor at Tom's Hardware, covering a range of topics on computing and consumer electronics. You can find more of his work in many major publications, including CNN and FOX, to name a few.