My dad was a career mailman, well actually, a lot more than that. He was a 30+ year employee of the US Postal Service and eventually retired as Superintendent of the Olney Post Office, in Philadelphia after career that spawned multiple stations and roles ranging from route examiner to nigh shift floor manager. They weren't glamorous jobs compared to what I do now, but my dad did teach me a lot about the postal system and how the sender pays the bills or as he said, they sorta do.
He explained that second class mail, which was what magazines and newspapers traveled at was usually paid for by the sender, but really that the costs were factored in to a point in what the subscriber was paying.
So, when I saw pal Dean Bubley's post about Sender Pays, I thought of my dad and how he explained it.
This model is not far fetched. Instead it makes a lot of sense. Why should we as wireless data subscribers pay twice for our downloads. Once to subscribe to say, the shows we view via iTunes or the music we buy, and then pay for the broadband, wired or wireless.
I've heard this Sender Pay model from Martin Geddes. Like Bubley, Geddes is another of the crew who will be at eComm end of this month in Amsterdam, the event that Alec Saunders just booked his trip to go to as well.
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