Enabling Paid Content on the Internet via ISPs

I have been pondering the issue of value and monetization in the publishing business quite a bit of late and stumbled upon this interesting thought. The argument by the service providers against network neutrality is that it is the presence of the network that enables publishers to generate revenue and stay profitable. The more popular a publisher becomes, the more it stands to gain from a network with neutral carriage policies, thus leading the contention that the carriers themselves should be compensated in line accordingly.

Let us assume for the moment that the argument is true. If you were to turn the argument around, it would also be true that the reason for users to be a customer of the service provider is the existence of the publisher that incentivizes her/him to use the ISP. Looking at it that way, the only party who gets to monetarily benefit directly from this usage is the service provider and not the content publisher. In fact, in looking for streams of revenue that are indirect, the content publisher actually helps the publisher earn more by enabling an eco-system of advertising networks and other ancillary services.

Mind you, the user is already paying the service provider for capacity using either metered or unmetered plans and with the hard limits now being put in place by the providers even on unmetered lines, we can safely assume that their average revenue per user is considerably higher than what a content publisher gets.

Which leads me to the question: Why can't service providers do a revenue share with the content publishers at least for exclusive content? Once you get over the shock, and look around, it is easy to see that it is a model that is already in place at the telephony segment and that is one place where there has been decent growth and money even through the downturn. I think the idea is worth taking a look at, though, realistically, I don't think it will ever go anywhere.