The pro-market forces in the network neutrality debate seem to be missing a single, very important point, on one of the key aspects of network neutrality. Why should Google, Amazon, my blog and others pay for bandwidth at every network that our traffic flows through? More importantly, why should the "market decide" who wins on something this fundamental? Take this quote from CEO of Deutsch Telekom:

Ricke said it would only be fair if content providers like search engine Yahoo--which offers e-mail, online games and music videos--would pay for access to networks that would allow them to deliver their products at higher speeds.

"It is not fair that only the customer, via the monthly subscription fee (for using the Internet), pays for this great new world," Ricke said.

Just where is the fairness aspect coming in? Let's say that Google has its bandwidth provided by some fictional corporation known as XYZ Telecom (I don't know who leases them their lines right now). Google pays, probably conservatively, in at least the tens of millions every month for its bandwidth. More realistically, probably well over one hundred million dollars. Google also happens to be just one of many, many companies that line the pockets of their bandwidth providers quite handsomely. Only a patently dishonest individual could claim that Google is screwing anyone over because they pay for their lines like every other telecom customer and even have invested incredible sums of money into buying their own dark fibre. Yet, somehow Google is screwing them over because the profit margin isn't quite what the telecoms would like it to be.

An even better example is Apple. The telecoms' CEOs love to make soundbites about the cost of bandwidth to provide streaming video and reliable audio online. Apple's iTunes Music Store probably goes through almost as much, if not more, bandwidth every month than Google does, and that will be even more the case when they start making full movie sales part of their service. They will, in turn, negotiate new deals with their bandwidth providers to greatly increase the amount of bandwidth available at their data centers which process the vast volumes of transactions that go through the iTunes Music Store. Who is going to make big wads of cash off of this increased demand for video products from the iTunes Music Store? Not just Apple, but their service provider(s)! After all, I don't see bandwidth giveaways for corporate America nor do I see armed mercenaries under Apple's employment coercing the telecoms into providing them free or far below fair market priced bandwidth.

So why do I think it should be illegal for Verizon or SBC to limit Google's service through XYZ corp? Practicality and principle. There reaches a point of absurdity with principle that principle must yield to reality, and this is definitely one of them. The telecoms' customers pay for access to each other, and they pay for it on the basis that they don't get severely limited. Only in the perverted minds of the telecoms is it justified to sell a 1.5Mpbs DSL service, and then throttle it down to effectively around 300kbsp because the service that the user is requesting hasn't paid for "premium service." The fact that Verizon and others are not getting any kickbacks from the enormous sums of money that Google pays XYZ Corp, and the fact that they didn't properly price their DSL/Cable plans, does not justify them changing the nature of the service midstream. It's not Google's problem, it's not my problem, it's Verizon's for being unwilling to allow full internet service, even though that's what they're claiming to sell.

The problem here as I see it, is not a matter of whether Verizon should be allowed to devote 80% of its network to providing high-quality IPTV services, but how they should be able to limit their customers' access. If they are selling 1.5Mbps of downstream bandwidth to their customers, they should have a legal obligation to do everything they can to provide that service at any given time. If that means sacrificing part of that 80% they want to reserve, then tough luck. You sell a service, you have an obligation to provide it. That means that they have no right to throttle access to the iTunes Music Store down to 300kbps because Apple did not pay up. If they artificially limit my 1.5Mpbs connection, then they have actually refused to provide the service that I am paying for.

Let's not get distracted by focusing on the issue of whether they should be able to provide premium delivery to services that pay them. It'd actually be a good thing for Verizon, SBC, Deutsch Telekom and others to charge a nominal monthly fee to provide an even higher quality of service for certain technologies such as IPTV. The issue is that this not what they're talking about. They're talking about making companies like Google pay again for bandwidth they've already bought and making their broadband customers pay for services that they have no intention of providing. After all, why else would they be raising a stink about fairness here? Routing others traffic is part of cost of doing business when you're in the networking business. Google's ISP should respond by throttling all traffic from Verzion's network down to nothing. Or, even better, Google should buy the infrastructure in between major points in the global network and shutdown Verizon, SBC and others entirely until they agree to end this nonsense once and for all.