Best Business Commentary
“Congestion pricing works," so why don’t our airports use it? says Steven Pearlstein in The Washington Post. Can’t anyone make Internet telephony profitable? says Fortune’s Yi-Wyn Yen in CNNMoney.com.
Who killed congestion pricing?
“Congestion pricing works," so why don’t our airports use it? says Steven Pearlstein in The Washington Post. It’s basic economics: if you charge airlines a premium to use runways at peak times, it creates incentives to rid airports of congestion that costs us “an estimated $9 billion a year in wasted time and money.” Thirty years after this “simple and sensible solution” was proposed, a cast from “a classic Agatha Christie mystery” has conspired to kill it: airlines, private pilots, corporate jet users, airport operators, members of Congress. The culprits each have their reason, but their real victim is “the traveling public.”
The elusive Internet pay phone
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Can’t anyone make Internet telephony profitable? says Fortune’s Yi-Wyn Yen in CNNMoney.com. EBay’s $1.4 billion hit on its “voice over Internet Protocol” (VoIP) subsidiary Skype is hardly the industry’s only sob story. Look at Vonage and the now-defunct SunRocket. “Consumer confusion” about VoIP and well-publicized reliability issues haven’t helped, but actually “Internet phone usage has grown steadily,” nearly quadrupling since 2005. The problem is that “consumers are less willing to pay for the service.” Many VoIP services are free, and as Skype can attest, “it's hard to make money off the free users.”
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
-
Cuba roiled by island-wide blackouts, Hurricane Oscar
The country's power grid collapsed for the fourth time in just two days
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
The North Korean troops readying for deployment in Ukraine
The Explainer Third country wading into conflict would be 'the first step to a world war' Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned
By Elliott Goat, The Week UK Published
-
'Age of barbarism': are we doing enough to protect young pop stars?
In The Spotlight Some argue that Liam Payne's death should lead to a ban on young pop stars
By Chas Newkey-Burden, The Week UK Published