That would work in principle, but you don't describe a situation that's relevant to the US, which is where the main debate happens. The Internet service providers (ISP) tend to have local monopolies and, when they have said monopolies, abuse the heck out of them both in terms of poor pricing and poor levels of service. If the US had an ISP market similar to the one in Romania, then the presence of competition would tend to prevent the abuse we have been seeing.

Further, the ISPs have been getting tax breaks to the tune of billions if added up over the years. The purpose of those breaks has been to build out infrastructure. It's been decades and it's not happening because the companies have been allowed to gain local monopolies and abuse them for anti-comptetive purposes. Break that last mile monopoly andy you'll see competition in the US for the first time.

As it stands, net neutrality is essential to allow competition, given the existing circumstances.

Hi...

That's a good point and I agree to an extent. The problem is that Laissez-faire capitalism doesn't work either. That just leaves the potential for abuse in other forms (or in identical or similar ways, too, if we're comparing to socialism or communism.) There's been such a level of the bigger businesses buying out the smaller ones in the past few decades, that, to me, it's arguable whether we have real competition anymore (in certain fields.) Hard drive and video chip/card manufacturing is an example of this.

I think there needs to be appropriate checks and balances for businesses (as well as government) to help prevent the different kinds of abuse and even monopolies. I think government can also be helpful in ensuring an even playing field in terms of competition. Really, big business is no better than big government when it comes to ethics and morality.

Regards...

I don't know what they have in Romania, but here in Maryland I can choose Verizon FiOS, Comcast Xfinity or a dish satellite company.

I suspect in time we'll have internet choices similar to other utilities: electric, gas and phone. I used to have phone service provided by a Virginia company named "StickDog" that was delivered over Verizon's copper wires. And I currently buy my power from someone other than the BGE which owns the power cables to my house. So why can't I buy internet utility service fed through my FiOS fiber but provided by someone other than Verizon? NN will make that much more complicated.

In our market, there are four companies that provide Internet service in addition to both AT&T and Comcast.

In Oz we're in the fortunate situation of needing commercial services (eg http://www.iselect.com.au/internet/ - an example, NOT an endorsement) to help us choose an ISP