DISQUS

Also, BTW, content providers already pay surcharges to get their content to consumers more effectively--but they pay not the telcos, but companies like Akamai and Limelight, which have local cache servers placed all over the Internet as close to the eyeball customers as possible. (Or they pay more to get the effect of Akamai-type services themselves through redundant and diverse providers and servers.)

Net neutrality advocates need to be careful that their proposals don't prohibit business models like Akamai's.

The telco proposal to charge content providers isn't to double-charge (though clearly they want to maximize profits and make money at both ends), it's to have the content providers subsidize the cost of fiber to the home for the consumers, because the consumer isn't going to want to pay the full cost. Frankly, I don't think that even if the telcos get the option to do that that they'll be able to maintain such a regime--consumer demand for services not developed by the telcos will end up giving the providers of those services the upper hand, not the telcos.