Re:Why? Simple! (Score 4, Interesting)

I'm kind of in the business facilitating anti-neutrality (I know, I know...), and carriers are worried about their future - e.g. Telcos selling DSL see broadband killing their long-distance calling income, or cable providers see online content killing their cable TV income. They don't want their value reduced to providing a fat pipe for $45/mo, losing all their other business, and they want to know how to extract more money from their customers.

The "message" that they're rubbing their hands with glee to hear is "STOP creating more bandwidth, it's killing you. Create a bandwidth shortage by not upgrading, and we can help you make people pay to get priority for their (now shitty) VOIP, or IPTV stream etc.." Currently, the best-effort network is often good enough, but they need to create a shortage. It's pure manipulation to gouge for money, and as long as all the carriers play ball, it will work, since traffic is growing 50-100% a year. It'll be sold to us as a great improvement/bonus ("We can guarantee your bandwidth for glitch-free VOIP and IPTV, gaming etc, for only an extra $30/mo."). They'd much rather plow money into the infrastructure for this which will make them more money (smarter routers, identity management services) than more bandwidth, which will keep their revenue/customer static. Good for the NSA too, to track everyone more efficiently, so they can be charged.

The only hope is that maverick flat-rate, high quality carriers will provide us connectivity in competition to these bastards.

Incidentally, it's pretty much what Enron did for electricity in California - shut off supply to drive up prices, profit!