Net neutrality issues are a symptom of the lack of competition in the US, but it's not all roses and sunshine in countries with robust broadband competition eit

Net neutrality issues are a symptom of the lack of competition in the US, but it's not all roses and sunshine in countries with robust broadband competition either. Since network netrality violations are frowned upon, eyeball ISPs have resorted to playing favorites and extracting payments from over the top / web service providers. The battlefields are in carrier interconnect points and Internet exchanges, where ISP, transit providers and service providers meet to exchange bits coming and going to broadband users. The weapons of choice are denial of peering connections and congestion of existing connections. The shakedown is as simple as it is effective. Want your bits to go through? Pay up. Some of these peering wars have made it to the press, but most don't being shrouded in NDAs and trade secrets. Here are some examples of the public ones: - Free in France vs. Youtube - Orange vs. Megaupload - Orange in Africa vs. Google - Netflix vs. US ISPs Public or not, one thing is for sure these peering wars are only about to get worse. What is needed to avoid these and other potential problems are just basic consumer protection rules: - Truth in advertizing - Minimum performance guarantees - Independent third party verification The funny part is that we don't need new laws or regulations. We just need to actually enforce the laws we have. And sufficiently penalize infractions to make it economically unfeasible not to comply.