Here at the Lounge, we have been talking for years about how broadband providers have manipulated our bandwidth to increase profits on their content side. How ISP’s are proposing Deep Packet Inspection for network management and  e-mail, and how that’s like the post office charging for a ghetto stamp. We have talked quite often about the need for more competition in the broadband market and how in competitive markets, ISPs act much more pro-consumer. We talked about how in markets that do lack competition, the cable industry has flooded State and Local government with FUD and untold $$millions while lobbying for regulations that stifle competition and innovation.

The one thing we haven’t talked about is Net Neutrality. What is it, how it can help us diversify our media choices and how it just might stimulate a whole new world of media distribution, like the Television did 50 years ago. Hulu, Ruku, XBox, Tivo and Boxee are popular alternatives to the traditional cable distribution model, and those Money Grubbing Cable TV shysters are doing everything to make them fail. It’s time we helped, and Net Neutrality might just be the law we all need.

The idea behind net neutrality is that the owner of the plumbing should not care what the plumbing is used for or who uses it. This means that just because you are the local cable company, you cannot discriminate in how your Internet service is priced to benefit your other businesses. Streaming a 3 gig movie should not, for example, be more expensive than streaming the same amount of data from a cable branded stream. Net Neutrality would address the DPI issue in that it would de-monetize the data, it would make it illegal to click-watch without opt-in, and make it illegal to ‘cap for crap’ unless the Exaflood really does happen. In a nutshell, it would make the Internet a dumb pipe, just what they invented 20 years ago.

The carriers very much want the FCC to stay as far away as possible from the network neutrality debate. And if their actions are any indication, they are trying very hard to push through as much change before the government steps in. In proposing what looked like Internet pricing intended to ward off competition to its cable TV business, Time Warner set off  a shit storm of criticism. This time around, it looks like Congress is starting to get involved, and where Congress goes the FCC soon follows. A Democrat-controlled FCC will probably not roll over for cable companies quite as easily as the Bush FCC did. After seeing this particular danger lurking, Time Warner bailed on the new pricing, at least for now. This was a direct result of the potential for increased oversight, not because the average customer would pay much higher prices. TW really doesn’t give a crap about you the customer, and that’s why I expect it to show up again in somewhat different form sometime in the next few months. Either way, everyone must understand that laws are needed now. Once these pricing plans go live, there will be very little we can do about it.

In closing, there is simply was no reasonable justification for the per-gigabyte pricing that Time Warning Cable was proposing. I cannot imagine a situation in which a gigabyte of Internet data should cost $1 from the cable company, when it costs them about 3 cents to produce in a non-competitive market. I strongly believe that Internet companies should provide either access or content, but not both. Verizon should not discriminate against Yahoo because it has a deal with Google. The Internet carrier should handle traffic for both companies equally. Time Warner was planning to charge those kind of rates to help kill the ‘On-Demand video market. That’s a fact. The way I look at it, Net Neutrality may be the only thing between me and all those streaming re-runs of Speed Racer.