Canadian GSM carrier Rogers, revealed a plan today to charge customers based an added fee for priority access. The way the plan works is simple. In times of overloaded network capacity, users who pay an added fee could have their data packets given priority over other, non-paying users. While no actual fees have been stated, $10 has been heard mentioned a few times in passing.

Now, we don’t even have to begin to go into how wrong this is. From a business standpoint, it’s great. You can charge people $10 extra for a service you’ll rarely ever have to offer them. With that said, the plan is unsurprisingly receiving criticism because of how it will “reward the rich and punish the poor”. We all understand cellular capacity and bandwidth are being strained. But there has to be a better way. What do you think? Would you pay extra for priority access? Finally, is it even right/ethical/legal?

For now, we don’t have to worry too much. Rogers has no plans of rolling out the feature — they’re merely gauging public interest. At the same time, none of the other competing Canadien cellular providers have vocalized interest in such a plan.

Via: Electronista