Such an approach would preserve the ability of Internet service providers to engage in individualized negotiations with [content companies] for a host of services
See, the problem with this is AT&T is the network. That's it.
It's none of their damned business what content companies and services I use. Their job is to give me a network pipe to access the internet.
This is just propping up a business model where they can say "Nice Netflix you have there, it would be a shame if something happened to it". They want the right to do more rent-seeking from new services.
If AT&T and the other ISPs hadn't built a model based on over-subscription, and avoided investing in their infrastructure to actually meet the capacity they claim, they'd be able to do this.
But instead they like to pretend they're selling you a good service, when in reality they are selling you a service which is woefully underpowered and hasn't been upgraded.
Every one of these companies advertises their big awesome service, which you can stream all sorts of HD and do all sorts of cool things .. but the reality is they don't have the infrastructure for people to use the service as it's been advertised. So, in theory someone somewhere might get the same awesomeness in the commercial .. but in practice, that's not what they're really selling.
ISPs should just be made common carriers, and told that they don't get to try to charge people extra for the services they already claim to have sold them.
My cable company advertises about how much awesome HD content I can get. But in reality, when you watch the HD channels, they're all heavily compressed to the point that in some instances you can see more digital noise than anything else. I can tell straight away I'm not really getting 1080p all the time, I'm getting a heavily compressed version of it.
So, when all of these companies start talking about ultra HD, or their shiny new wireless network, or anything else ... I automatically assume that what they're selling is not what they're claiming, and they're going to degrade the quality of it and claim that's how it's supposed to work.
It's like buying a car, only to find out that the claimed performance isn't anywhere near what they said, and that if you actually wanted that you need to pay extra. It's false advertising.