T-Mobile: Content providers should pay for data heavy apps

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Producers of content, not carriers, should pay the price for the masses of costly bandwidth being sucked up by cell surfers every day, according to the upper echelons of T-Mobile.
While rival AT&T has started capping data plans and charging users extra for data hogging, René Obermann, CEO of Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile’s parent company believes it’s those who produce media rich and heavy content who should be made to pay.

Large scale, successful online platforms like Apple and Google, he claims, should not be using the mobile internet like a free lunch buffet, offering all you can eat without paying their way.
After all, if you create a problem, shouldn’t you be part of the solution?
Well, if you’re a net neutrality fan –believing that network traffic should absolutely not be restricted based on content discrimination – you probably wouldn’t think so, but Obermann does have something of a point in pushing for a more tiered pricing system where certain types of traffic like data heavy video or music would cost more, with some of that burden falling to consumers, and some to the providers themselves.
Of course this might mean that content providers start charging more, but then maybe data hungry consumers – who currently behave much like children on an unlimited allowance – might realize that the best things in life most certainly are not free, and that they should consume more responsibly, or pay for the strain they are putting on the rest of the network.
Data throttling is certainly not a popular fix with either content providers or consumers, but when a smallish number of customers use disproportionate amounts of bandwidth to the point where the entire network strains under the pressure, certainly something has to be done. And if not throttling, maybe a three way cost sharing model would make more sense.
With tablets looming large on the horizon, 3G congestion becomes even more of a problem, and without clear rules and pricing models, things could easily get out of hand as the YouTube, P2P generation bites off more data than carriers can chew.
It’s unclear what the U.S. Federal Communications Commission would have to say about such radical views, especially as it has been wrestling with the pros and cons of net neutrality for some time now.
The question also remains whether this could cause a fundamental split in approaches to data between the US and Europe, with T-Mobile being active in both markets.
So, should the likes of Apple and Google pay up? Is it likely? What do you think is fair? Let us know your views.