AT&T’s shocking plan to make … gasp … PROFITS!

[Commentary] The tech blogs are abuzz with news of a nefarious plot by the nation’s second largest mobile network operator to increase its profits by lowering the prices consumers pay to access data-intensive content and services through the economic miracle of fee shifting.

Instead of the consumer paying for a higher data cap in order to access data-intensive programming, the content provider will be able to pay AT&T on the consumer’s behalf. All AT&T is doing is shifting some of the costs of data from consumers to those content and services providers who want to offer what’s effectively a coupon to users on small data plans that makes it easy for them to try out new services. It seems to me that this is an experiment that needs to take place, and that the outrage is premature at best. Some content distributors will clearly not choose to participate; in fact most won’t. But for a start-up company or an established firm seeking to expand the reach of its products, this is a reasonable move that is likely to add a great refinement to the mobile marketplace. If it causes unanticipated problems down the road, there are a raft of enforcement options available to rein it in, but we won’t know the consequences until we try it. So let’s proceed in the interest of science.