PT update Speed pays. A few Internet service providers are calculating that the fast connections they provide are just as valuable to traffic-starved Web sites as to the surfers themselves. Study after study shows that commerce sites lose customers because of slow connections. Those Web sites will then look much better to potential customers, Winfire executives say.
Analysts agree it's too early to tell just how much ISPs can tap Web sites for new revenues.
In the dial-up world, only America Online has successfully inserted itself between subscribers and their Web destinations, many note. But a few analysts say high-speed ISPs potentially are looking at fertile ground for new revenues. But the precedent is there. He cited the billions of dollars spent through 800 numbers, in which the telephone companies sit in the middle of transactions taking a small fee. At the core of these nascent plans is the idea that Net commerce and content is still losing massive amounts of business from people fed up with waiting for Web pages to load, or audio and video files to download.