I had forgotten how long this Net neutrality debate has been going on. While looking for something else, I stumbled onto my post from April 2006, when I lived on the East Coast and had FiOS.
Sorry to quote myself, but this is as relevant today as eight years ago:
Some Net providers would like to give preference to their services, even penalizing competitors. But what is a competing service? How about you and me? There has been too much focus on Net non-neutrality as being a business-against-business thing, where consumers might get less choice and so be harmed. I reckon the big Net providers would just as easily compete with their customers. I’ve got email running off my own domain. What would prevent my provider, Verizon, from favoring e- routed through its servers and putting the breaks on email sent off my domain? The competitor pushed to the slow lane would be me, or you.
Think about this concept in context of the FCC proposal establishing fast and slow lanes and where you might be using Gmail when Comcast or Verizon wants you using their mail service instead.