When contract language is written for clients like Comcast, especially in this particular move, it acts to minimize the likelihood of enforced net neutrality. A standard comment from the inner circle could be, “If we don’t do something now, they’re going to do it for us - which version are you willing to live with?”. Such decisions have spawned millions for the public relations industry to develop messages designed to undermine both competition or regulation in its absence.

If bandwidth were available in the retail market as a commodity subject to effective competition, it wouldn’t make much difference what contract language Comcast used, because its discriminatory practices would have driven Comcast out of business long ago.

For example, imagine if bandwidth could be bought and sold like computer hardware on the internet, in a national market with lots of sellers, plenty of options and independent reviews and other sources to inform real choices and avoid scams and other problems. Play games with customers like Comcast does and a computer hardware company would be out of business in short order.

Comcast filed in its April 9th comment before the FCC in Docket 07-52, a press release by Pando Networks which collaborates with among others, Verizon, to “improve” P2P use on broadband networks. Comcast states that the press release “provides further proof that policymakers have been right to rely on marketplace forces, rather than government regulation, to govern the evolution of Internet services.”

Wrong. Deregulated monopolies have the same incentive to reduce cost at least as much as companies subject to competition and more when it results in degradation of service quality. The difference is they don’t pass on the savings to customers, keeping it for themselves instead. And in this case, the economic damage incurred from undermining competition among producers and consumers of content, along with internet commerce like computer hardware, is several magnitudes above whatever monopoly profits are gained.

Pando Networks is a clear sign, like the content firm of hulu.com against net neutrality, that the healthy division between a near pure monopoly or duopoly of broadband bandwidth and the vibrant, competitive content which flows over these networks is breaking down. Maintaining sharp separations between these two with net neutrality has no negative impact whatsover on the incentives and technical ability of network providers to “improve” P2P flows and reduce cost in their networks, and in fact encourages it.