I suggested a decade ago that Net Neutrality rules could be foregone, but one important caveat is needed, that no charges to consumers or producers be levied in

I suggested a decade ago that Net Neutrality rules could be foregone, but one important caveat is needed, that no charges to consumers or producers be levied in respect to violating net neutrality i.e. a producer can't pay to have their packets move faster/slower. That's the only way to prevent abuses which are essentially extortion. Without that rule, the ISPs will invest money into new networks...but it will have negative consumer value and a lot of rent-seeking or pure extortion value for the ISPs. Packet-based systems are so efficient that some sort of QoS packet routing makes no sense technically in respect to the overhead of brand new networking schemes. Unbiased packet routing is doing just great streaming HD videos on Netflix to 100 million people worldwide, and will continue to do great. The more fundamental problem is that the bottlenecks are at the last mile and there is NO WAY that Verizon is going to lay two cables to your home, one fast lane for important traffic, and another slow lane!! Without last mile investment, there can not be any meaningful technical gains from violating net neutrality. ISPs want to get rid of net neutrality in order to extort money from Google, Facebook, Netflix and others. Netflix is already paying an extortion fee to Verizon who threatened them with slower speeds if they didn't pay up. The government's job is to insure that markets are fair and that effective monopolies don't abuse their power, through simple regulations. ISPs and Telco.s have regularly demonstrated for over a hundred years that they HAVE TO BE REGULATED...we would not have an internet or an inter-operable phone network if governments all over the world did force these companies to talk to other networks! The breakup of AT&T just over two decades ago (seems much longer!) was tremendous in spurring on lower costs and competitors in telecommunications.