It appears that Bell South, Verizon, & friends want major websites to pay for bandwidth that their customers are already buying. If they succeed they could profit enormously, but only at the expense of the websites that will have to pass that cost onto us or die (from customers disappearing) trying.
"The truth is often a terrible weapon of aggression. It is possible to lie, and even to murder with the truth." ALFRED ADLER
Bellsouth and (I believe) SBC has been planning this for some months now. I've been following the discussions on BroadbandReports on this. Sadly, some of the posters there think it's *okay* that BellSouth would be doing this and would accept "slightly" slower quality of service. I believe there will be a painful slippery slope that will extend to everybody, even the end-users and webmasters of small Web sites, if this development comes to pass.
I'm already paying my hosting company for Bandwidth, and my cable company for bandwidth. If they want to charge more for the websites, they can charge either one of those providers. I can't see paying a third time.