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 or prioritized on your network to benefit your other businesses.

It was only a matter of time before really innovative companies like Google, Hulu, or Skype were able to use the data you already pay for to provide the same services the the ISP’s provide. For the phone company to charge $10 a month for caller id when it costs $.05 to provide in a non-competitive market is wrong. And to restrict the consumer from utilizing these services simply because they compete with you is just bad for the consumer.

Net Neutrality is all about fostering competition. The new and innovative use of bits and bytes across the broadband network has made cable and phone company as content providers irrelevant, whether they know it yet or not. That leaves them with one purpose: running a network.

Net Neutrality insures that the network they manage is open to competing services and does not discriminate or favor one application over another. To say that an application like Google Voice somehow violates these principals is bunk. Network neutrality has always been about phone and cable companies trying to maintain power in the face of the Internet Revolution. Nothing more.