As I read the law, the non-neutral net would allow telcos to, say, do traffic-shaping with *all* VoIP services, but they could not, say, allow Vonage but squash Skype. This is already covered under the Sherman Act and later legislation covering restraint of commerce, not to mention existing FCC regulation. The cat is already far enough out of the bag in terms of PR that I am not too worried about the telcos censoring Craigslist and such, and it’s not even clear it would be any more or less legal or illegal than it is today.

The real problem here is that even in densely-populated Boston, I have only two choices for high-speed Internet, Slow Expensive Cable, and Slower Cheap DSL. If we did pass some hardcore net-neutrality I could very well see the telcos taking 10+ years to bring a better service to market, and forget about new competition. Non-neutrality would allow, say, Comcast, to lay a fat pipe to my door with the intention to deliver IPTV services, knowing that they can also make anyone else pay in order to use that pipe to deliver a competing IPTV service. This doesn’t exactly strike me as the end of the Net as we know it.

Ultimately Amanda, who is telegenic enough to sell an eskimo a refrigerator, gets one thing right, and that is that there is not enough competition. Ultimately I don’t trust Comcast or the FCC to deliver good services at fair prices, as they are often feeding from the same trough. What we need are more choices. Broadband over power lines looks promising, and WiMax may open a lot of new doors. Consumers will choose “real Internet” if they have the choice. Let the telcos have their say over their networks, but let’s also do all we can to lower the obstacles to putting new networks in place.