So many things wrong in that article, I don't know where to begin.
I will begin with the part where he contradicts himself in the article, implying the Portugal style zero-rating is no big deal in the first half of the article, and then saying zero-rating could potentially be the biggest threat in the second half.
The second stuff he's wrong about is he conflates (poor) European country prices with the U.S. prices, so from his point of view it looks like the Portuguse have sort of a "first world problem" when they complain that the next 10GB costs only 5 euro if they buy an app package.
His mistake here is that he's not putting things into the local context. Many European countries have 1Gbps cable internet that costs somewhere around 15-30 euro. To Americans that looks "dirt cheap". But to the people in those countries it's just regular prices. It's not cheap for them, which is why most have stuck on the "much slower" 100 Mbps lines and such. So saying that Portuguese don't have anything to whine about because their internet is already "cheap" or whatever, is just wrong.
Another thing is that today's 1GB data plan is tomorrow's 10GB data plan on mobile devices. Data usage is exploding. Without net neutrality (and strong competition), ISPs could leave everyone on the 1GB plan 5 years later, even though they now need 10GB of data for their daily needs, while overcharging them for "app packages".
This way, carriers could move us from a world of "I can visit 100% of the internet on my data plan" to "I can visit only 10% of the internet on my data plan..for the other 90% I will have to buy various data packages, where the internet is split into groups of services."
And again, competition IS the ultimately solution. But net neutrality is there to ensure things don't go terrible when there isn't any competition. If the US wants to get rid of net neutrality, then it should first try to foster much stronger competition at a local level. Then we can begin discussing the repeal of net neutrality, if still necessary.
Also, Ben must have a short memory. Before the previous FCC started arguing for net neutrality, Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon started slowing down Netflix and Youtube. I was constantly seeing people on Reddit complaining that their 50 Mbps Comcast connections can't seem to handle the 3Mbps Netflix traffic.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/02/netfl...
But seriously, do we really need to spell out why the U.S. ISPs want to get rid of net neutrality? Does Ben actually believe that the ISPs are doing this because the rules have been "oh so hard on them"? Or is it because they want to screw the consumers nine ways to heaven, and having no rules in place, just like when they repealed the privacy framework recently banning them from collecting user data, will help them do that?