Let me ask you this.
Why should these companies provide you with a fixed rate service? You say that consumers are getting the shaft, but is that really the case? No, you get what you pay for and if you can’t handle paying for it, then you don’t need it do you?
Multi-tier pricing is fine. It happens today. You want 1.5 Meg download speed? Great, buy that package, you want 10 Meg, 15 Meg, etc.. great. That is the way it should be.
But in a world without net neutrality, you will have the telco’s blocking your content, or SEVERELY restricting your content until websites/providers pay them big bucks to be put on the better tiers.
For example, you can watch netflix on a 1.5 Meg plan. Not any more, customers of 1.5 meg plans will be getting packets once in a blue moon. You’ll have to move up to the 10, 15, 15+ packages to watch netflix.
Without net-neutrality, the telco’s will limit what you can access based on package you buy. And for those saying it’s the telco’s right to do that, I”ll simply add this ...
1) The internet has been built to date upon net-neutrality, it will get to you based on how fast your internet connection is. Now, that would no longer be the case. It goes to the highest bidder 1st.
2) For the telco lovers, what about medium to small business that can’t pay millions to have their sites run fast? You are crippling those company’s abilities to do e-business. This doesn’t boil down to gov’t versus business, it boils down to big business destroying small business.
There are many others.