[nickodell]

(I'm not the guy you replied to.)

I think that the ISP's need some way to discriminate between different types of traffic. "All content should be treated equally," is a nice sentiment, but not all content is equally important. A VoIP call is more important than a file transfer.

I'm undecided whether the FCC should mandate that ISPs allow settlement-free peering. On one hand, the current system encourages companies to consolidate to gain more negotiating power. ("Oh, you don't want to pay to connect with our network? I guess you don't want to sell your products to 1/4 of America.") On the other hand, mandating SFP would decrease incentives to build long-range infrastructure, since you could just borrow it from someone else.