I'm reading people's comments on "net neutrality" and thinking "you're missing some facts".

1. During the dial-up days, we inherited the telcom and radio "common carrier" rules, which kept the last-mile provider from interfering with customers' communications.
2. Between 1999 and 2001, the FCC decided that these rules did not apply to "high speed" Internet from cable providers.
3. They later decided that these rules did not apply to "high speed" Internet from telcom providers.
4. Once cable companies started to interfere with customers' connections in order to force them to buy extra services from the cable company instead (for example), Vonage; and then started trying to charge fees to companies like Netflix who were delivering content to their mutual customers, both Congress and the White House (and therefore the FCC) decided it must be stopped.

In short, net neutrality is about restoring the balance that was previously part of the legal regime under which all electronic communications were regulated. It has little to do with freedom of speech (and in fact, under any regulatory regime, illegal content is still illegal to transmit or receive and the providers are subject to enforcement orders to monitor, block, and report it).

Anyway, Net Neutrality has some interplay with QoS requirements, but if ISPs charged all providers (including those which they own) equally for special connectivity requirements, no one would be complaining.

If every major "high speed" provider had not taken federal funds to help with building out their networks, maybe it would not be an issue. If someone helps fund your activities, whether you like it or not, they get a say in those activities.

( #sonTwo found this out one time when I was off work and he needed tuition money. One of my brothers and one of my brothers-in-law paid his way that semester, then they both got on his case if he spent too much time on Facebook or they saw too many photos of alcohol. When he complained about it, my brother told him "you opened the door to it when you invited us to pay your tuition". )

I felt at the time that there might be some corruption involved in the FCC's wrong-headed decisions, but I did not bother to investigate. It would be interesting for someone to follow the trajectories of the then-current commission members to see where they went after their FCC terms ended.