However, network neutrality rules could be a balance for the lack of choice consumers currently have. I can easily foresee all carriers in a market giving and enforcing preference to their ‘monetized content’ partners.

How exactly does allowing a carrier to regulate content (which is what ‘network preferencing’ boils down to) do anything but harm competition among content providers?

If BigContentCo can buy enough network preference, how does SmallStartupLLC compete? The only competition is in the bidding war for each carriers network preference level. Great for the carriers, not good for new content providers, not good for the end-users (aka consumers).

Ideally, today’s news would prompt Congress to take up the matter too. For a long time we’ve said that FCC activity on Internet neutrality would benefit from clear congressional guidance, authorization, and limits, so that the FCC’s task and regulatory authority are not open-ended. You can read more about our thoughts on this by looking the more inclusive comments we submitted to the FCC on its overall Broadband Plan. http://www.cdt.org/speech/20090608_broadband_comments.pdf

If I plan in advance which city to live in, I can actually have a choice between 3 carriers;
Cable, DSL, and Fiber.

It doesn’t really matter what the branding is, those are my three carriers. In some cases, even those three are really only two; AT&T fiber vs AT&T DSL is still only one carrier.

Better yet, ask this question:
If I subscribe to ‘BetterDSL Inc’, and they are using ‘BigPhoneCo’ copper, does my BetterDSL access still get ‘managed’ by BigPhoneCo’s ‘All your video are belong to us’ network?

Every time I hear the argument that a customer could simply switch carriers, I assume the argument comes from one of two places: Anti-network nuetrality, or the Twilight Zone(c).

ISP moguls Neutrality

Search Neutrality. Currently, if you pay Google more your ad appears higher on the list of search results. This is unfair and discriminates against the little guy.

Coffee Neutrality. With Starbucks on every street corner, the playing field for caffeine pushers is hardly level. We can fix this.

Airplane Seat Neutrality. It defies the basic rules of fairness that people paying more should get bigger seats near the front of the plane. Let’s put a stop to this practice.

Baseball Neutrality. Why should the Yankees get all the good ball players? Let’s put a stop to team payroll practices that only serve to keep the Cubs from winning a world series.

I’m sure the readers can come up with more…