Marc Andreessen talks about the pros and cons of net neutrality

I can't help thinking that if, 20 years ago, Microsoft had struck a deal with the major ISPs to prioritise packets being downloaded to Internet Explorer over those being downloaded to Netscape browsers, Marc would have had a very different take on net neutraliy.

This is a nice rosy view of things, but it's just not accurate. They're de facto infrastructure builders, and for their efforts they want a monopoly on that infrastructure, with all the powers it comes with (e.g. favoring some traffic over others). The problem is that everybody long ago realized that infrastructure monopolies are a bad idea because they destroy both competition and infrastructure growth. It's why major roads aren't owned by private companies, it's why the electric company can't charge you more if they don't like the brand of your TV, and it's why public transportation services like trains and buses can't charge you more if you're partners.

Letting private businesses compete in various niche ways is fine as long as they are (1) actually private and (2) actually in a working free market. Telecoms in the U.S. are neither. They're so heavily subsidized and regulated that they function more as pseudo-government entities who should be entrusted with very serious business of maintaining public infrastructure. But they should definitely be prevented from rampantly discriminating against their customers to profit. The whole point of infrastructure is that it is a common public good, available to everyone equally without discrimination.

I consider Andreesson to have zero credibility in this matter, for reasons stated above and more. Why not allow rich and powerful corporations to control access to US consumers? Our smartest consumer startups, denied US consumers, will start to build Twitter and Pinterest and other services for consumers outside of AT&T and Verizon's control, and we will be more and more irrelevant as a market and a technology innovator.

I don't know whether Comcast is using IP to deliver their video-on-demand services to your cable box, but let's assume they are. That IP bandwidth is above and beyond whatever you're paying for as a "broadband" connection, but that's just accounting: It's all packets in the end. Is it "neutral" for Comcast to be able to use that bandwidth to provide you with movies and TV while restricting NetFlix to your capped/metered "Internet" bandwidth?

If NN would disallow such restrictions, then Comcast really is a low margin dumb pipe provider. Some people love that idea, but it doesn't encourage any of the existing broadband providers (maybe sans Google) to keep spending tens of billions of dollars to roll out faster and faster networks.

If NN doesn't apply to these services, then of course Comcast will simply package up as much of their IP-based applications and content as possible into proprietary interfaces with your TV and other devices while making the bandwidth available to "open" IP applications commensurately smaller.