‘Net Neutrality’ Amendment Rejected

I am getting a bit confused as to what ‘Net Neutrality’ is all about.

The large content providers, like Google and Yahoo and Microsoft, have very large data pipes connecting themselves to the Internet. They are paying the market rate for the volume they use and for the Quality of Service they expect. The Service Providers use those revenues to maintain and expand the network. If new services and a new Quality of Service is required, the service provider is perfectly entitled to charge more. They are adding new equipment and capabilities to the network.

My one concern with the service providers is that they will use their monopolistic control of network access to charge exorbitant rates for new or old QoS traffic.

I know others are worried that the service providers will start corrupting QoS for content providers that are possible competitors for the Service Provider’s content. (That would be be a contract violation, just like a telco providing your call records to a third party.) This is not a smart thing to do and can be easily detected.

The Content Users are the most likely content throttle, their access bandwidth may not be suitable for some streaming content, and while the ISP may be able to provide more bandwidth (using more network resources) for more money, the user may not want to pay the additional tariff. That’s their decision.

Of course, if the ISP provides more bandwidth to deliver the ISP’s content, at no extra charge, then they are exerting their monopoly and should be so charged.