[Coda]

With all due respect, you've been misinformed. That isn't what it's about at all.

Competition for so-called "last-mile" connectivity is almost entirely unaffected. There's no policy in place or proposed to say that residential providers have to provide the same service to everyone, and it will continue to be the case to say that ISPs can charge customers more money to get better service.

The net neutrality discussion is all about how backbone providers interact with each other and with traffic that does not originate on their own network. Net neutrality means that if you run a website, you only have to pay for your website's connection to its service provider. You wouldn't have to pay for access to other networks that your service provider connects to.

So suppose you've got two competing sites, Bob's Videos and Joe's Movies. They offer exactly the same content. They charge their customers exactly the same amount of money. Both sites have equally good video players, equally good quality, and equally good search and recommendation functions. You'd think they should be equal, then. But under the current scheme, if Bob pays Verizon extra money, then Verizon customers will see that Joe's Movies is slower than Bob's Videos. But AT&T customers will see the two sites performing the same, and if Joe got annoyed at Bob and decided to go pay Comcast some extra money, then Comcast customers will get better performance from Joe's Movies.

In other words, the customers -- the end users, you and me -- have the quality of their Internet experience controlled not by what they pay for their own connection, and not by what services they choose to use, but by what companies they have no connection to or influence with do behind the scenes.