And yet, AT&T wants more money because they think they have the right to charge Netflix more to pass through their tollbooth.
- it's not their 'tollbooth', it's their road. On a road you can charge different rates for different types of vehicles, this is the same situation. An eighteen wheeler can cause more damage to the road that requires more maintenance than a motorcycle, this is the same thing: a movie that needs to be streamed a million times takes up much more capacity and energy and basically uses the system much more than millions of small individual requests do.
See, I even used an appropriate car analogy.
Ok, but if you charge the 18 wheeler more, how long before you decide to charge the pickup truck more? or sedan? or maybe make a special license so only 18 wheelers with your license can use the road and no one else? How long before they go after Youtube? Or Amazon Video? Or Facebook? Or Google? Or XBox Live? Anyone can make an argument that some service or website is "using more than others so you should pay more" but we're already paying for the service, we pay for the internet, what we decide to do with it is our business, whether we have unlimited or a 5gb cap or metered, if we want to use all of it for netflix instead of youtube why does that matter? Customers of these ISPs are paying for the net-neutrality already, they don't need to charge more. There will always be some website or service or something that uses a bit more than everyone else. If they start charging Netflix then they'll need to start charging Youtube, and then etc, before long they're charging every website or service that uses the internet that we're already paying for.
No other utility functions like this. The electric company doesn't say "oh you're using electricity for a air conditioner? We charge extra for air conditioners". No, they say "here is your electricity, use it as you see fit, whether it's a A/C or a dozen bitcoin servers or an electric car, we don't care how it's used, you are paying for that electricity." Internet should work the same way, they should charge us whatever they want to charge us and let us use the internet anyway we want, whether it's netflix or youtube or amazon prime.