Who pays for the web?

The cost of developing and testing the technology was paid by the US Department of Defence. Universities joined in because of the benefit it brought to them. At that stage, it was relatively cheap and risk-free for the commercial world to join in.

Lots of people started laying cable and installing microwave links to carry the expected traffic until the prices of the communications were driven down. This was more good news for the consumer. 

There was more good news. The basic costs of setting up a website were low, especially since there was an oversupply of the infrastructure. The result was a model of providing a free service. This expanded the number of users rapidly.

The bad news is that everyone started doing it. The unwary blew their budget on adverts, chic and champagne as they tried to attract  customers. When the dust settled, there was a mature system, whose development and capital costs had been effectively written off.

This was excellent news for the users who are only left with the running costs. And a website is much cheaper to run than an office. Of course the real costs are not those for a few square centimetres of disk space to store the site, nor the cost of adding a few drops to the communication pipelines that distribute the data. 

It is people who are expensive. So the answer is that you pay but you probably guessed that already, didn't you?

There are other business models. Some sites are like the local free paper and survive on advertising revenue. The business to customer (B2C) model is struggling when it competes on price but is great for specialised products and services. The business to business model (B2B) is forecast to free up entire lanes of motorways as salespeople stay at home when products and commodities are purchased electronically.

The pillars supporting the high streets and shopping malls have belatedly discovered 'clicks and mortar'. This combines the shopping experience with the convenience of clicking to buy with many delivery or collection options. Every consumer does it differently. The web just adds another dimension.

Who pays for all those international calls?

Not you. You are only responsible for the link to your service provider. The providers tie themselves together with a web of wire, cable and satellite links in a dynamic way that few understand. Your data might flow round the dark side of the Earth where the channels are not so busy because there are fewer folk on the telephone. Electricity could travel round the Equator many times in a single second, so the route is not important to you.

Occasionally, providers will put your request in a queue. They put your data along with many others' into a packet before forwarding it on the data-highway to the next link in the chain.  There it is unpacked, repacked with other data and forwarded until it reaches your provider, who delivers it to you. This is possible because everything happens so fast. The benefit to the Internet is that the links are used effectively.

It is hardly surprising that occasionally you encounter bottlenecks. If people tried to deliver goods the way the Internet handles data, we would be horrified. Everything would arrive in little bits and months after it was needed. But it works, so click away and don't worry what happens next. It's not your problem.

What is broadband?

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