I just read a very interesting article in the New York Times. AOL and Yahoo are starting to use a system that will give preferential treatment to emails from companies that pay from 1/4 to a penny per email to guarantee delivery. Otherwise, the messages will be delivered normally, running the risk of being blocked by a spam filter. The service will work like the Special Delivery post service or Certified mail in the US, where delivery on a certain date is guaranteed.
This may usher in changes in the economics of the internet. At the moment, to use the internet senders and recipients of data and e-mail cover their own costs of using the net, which is different from, say, the telephone system, in which the company whose customer places a call pays a fee to the company whose customer receives it.
One idea that we've touted at work a few times is how we as a network could charge to provide preferential bnadwidth to certain content providers e.g. a certain video download service could be given priority on our network over other data for a fee.
I personally didn't think this was going to happen for a few years, but Yahoo and AOL's move may accelerate this.
More: New York Times
