This is not a binary issue. Network neutrality would neither create free unlimited internet for everyone nor completely destroy the system. We are talking about changing incentives, not eliminating them. Content and bandwidth providers are both engaged in rent-seeking behavior, and those rents will be paid by consumers one way or another. Ultimately, they are all greedy corporations, because corporations are supposed to be greedy; no one is on the side of the angels here. As various commenters suggest, worries are significantly driven by which unscrupulous organization you are most scared of.

The relevant question seems to be how to work on #1. The dominant problem is the regulations-backed monopoly or duopoly on physical delivery of content. Whenever I see government negotiating with a government-backed cartel, I expect the cartel to come out well. In this case, I expect nominal reduction in pricing control to result in a further entrenchment of long-term control of the physical system. It’s the sort of tit-for-tat we see when a corporatist system gives ownership with one hand and takes control with the other. We have a poor record of trying to use new government regulations to offset old government regulations. At some point, your path needs to be reducing the regulations.

1) Entrenchment of their existing control over broadband to the home.

2) The legal ability to restrict third-parties use of those pipes, so they have “lock-in” for the most lucrative services that can be delivered over those pipes.

3) To act as toll-collector for *every* TCP/IP stream that someone else is making money from.

It’s not like they even hide this. Will they invest more in the pipes? Maybe, but probably not (your same arguments applied to pre-breakup AT&T, which did not even hurry to make tone dialing standard until after they were faced with competition), we can agree to disagree because it doesn’t even matter. What’s significant is that regardless of whether they provide good service, consumers and outside innovators will be harmed.

Once upon a time, every single phone call was charged by the minute, in-city calls at rates equivalent to today’s international rates, inter and intra state long distances at rates higher than you would probably believe, dollars per minute in many cases. The real cost of delivering VOD is in the pennies, but is charged at rates equal to or higher than physical rentals. This price will only go up if they are able to lock out potential competition.

In the process, the idea of the internet that can be used to make money by whatever business model you can make pay will be restricted to what can make money under the rules the gatekeepers dictate. Had such conditions applied in 1997, MMOG’s would have been stillborn.

–Dave

Bullshit. This has nothing to do with whether the plumbing providers will add more capacity, and everything to do with them wanting to shake down the content providers. What they are missing is this: Without the content, nobody needs their pipes. I haven’t gotten too worked up about it for the simple reason that, like the cable companies already found out once, they can’t win. But the blatant lying about how terrible the future will be if we keep doing things just like they are is pissing me off.

No content, no network. Shake down the content providers, and you will have either less content or more expensive content, but you won’t have a better service. Cable companies and DSL providers have found out that no amount of lobbying, cross-selling, and up-selling can make people pay more for bandwidth, so they want to grab onto the other end of the money trail with a little old-fashioned protection scheme. “Nice packets you got here. Be real shame if something bad was to happen to them.”

–Dave

The whole concept of content-based charges seems rather greedy to me, even though it would help my employer’s bottomline (and thus mine as well). However, lets look at the current model a moment.

Google has not only invested in their own servers, but in order for those servers to be available, they must have access to the backbone networks. They pay for this access. Just as any other website must pay fees to some form of provider, which in turns pays fees to those that own the actual fiber to transport the traffic.

You as an individual user, pay for your access to the internet through whatever provider you may use. Businesses and governments typically pay monthly, but they are under a lease for their bandwidth (T1, T3, etc). The net effect is the same, except they home users are not (as a rule) as expensive to provide service on an individual basis.

So now we have the customer paying the telco/cable company to access the internet, the content providers (by proxy) are paying to make this available to the consumer. The telco/cable company is making money in both directions here. The ONLY reason they are against net neutrality is in fact they wish to maintain monopolistic status. The telco is losing land lines due to people using VoIP. Why would they not attempt to make you still pay for phone service if they can, but instead of a ‘phone bill’ they can now call it tiered content pricing.

Giving the compaines more freedom in the pricing of access fees, (read: access, not content-based fees) and problem should be solved.

So yeah, to a point, government intervention is bad. But content-based pricing is even worse.

You can see it clearly in any market. American oil companies’ profits were subject to a windfall tax; American oil investment went down. European companies put price controls on pharmaceuticals; production of new drugs for the European market went down. How about a multi-step intervention effect? The US put tariffs on foreign steel; steel prices rose, along with domestic steel companies’ profits; manufacturing companies that use steel faced higher input prices and lower profits; investment in American manufacturing went down.

The funny part is that the major reason any harms could arise is due to monopoly power. That monopoly power has been granted by your government. There are companies lining up to provide cable, phone, and broadband service in your area, if only they were allowed. That market is so profitable that companies are building satellite networks to beam the signal to your house and circumvent the government-granted monopoly. If you want network neutrality to become a non-issue, you need to get rid of the government-sponsored anti-competitive practices we currently have, not increase their number in the hope that it will all balance out someday.

Content providers are already charged for outgoing bandwidth, based on usage. Home users are already charged for incoming bandwidth, but it’s a flat-rate fee. I think the best solution for both parties is to charge home users a lower flat-rate, plus bandwidth fees. My cable provider charges $30/month for 30GB/month at 5Mb/s. Their higher package is $40/month for 100GB/month at 7Mb/s. Speed is a bit week, but population density is much lower here than in Europe, so I can understand the disparity. Given those numbers, and the fact that the majority of their customers probably consume less than 1 GB/month, I’d suggest they could still turn a profit at, say, $25/month +$0.25-0.50/GB, but I’d expect higher speeds at the higher end of that.