This BBC story is deeply troubling. It describes how Netflix, one of the the big names and trend-setters in video streaming, has agreed to pay telecoms operator AT&T to ensure its content is delivered to users smoothly. Netflix has already reached similar agreements with Verizon and Comcast. The agreements are despite Netflix being opposed to paying fees to broadband providers for priority service, since it believes in net neutrality, the principle that all usage of the Internet is treated by carriers with the same priority.

Many people do not really see what all the fuss is about. The fact that Netflix has agreed to pay shows that it believes many carriers do not (or soon will not) have enough capacity to provide an adequate Internet service for video streaming users, without implementing a priority policy. So why do so many people believe, like me, that it is wrong to pay for priority service?

This other story, also on the BBC, illustrates the downside. The extra money that carriers are receiving through their priority deals with the likes of Netflix is not being used, as we might have hoped, to increase overall Internet capacity; probably the extra funds are not enough to improve service for everyone, and non-priority customers would certainly not be happy about also paying more for less of a share of the total capacity. In order to provide Netflix and other streaming users with the quality of service that they need, carriers need to downgrade service to other users: in this case, subscribers to a 4G "unlimited data" plan which Verizon no longer want to sell (but there are already quite a number of subscribers to this plan).

I have similar issues with my own ISP in Germany. At certain times of day, some kinds of high bandwidth usage are throttled back, to ensure adequate service for priority traffic.

In the USA, the regulator, the FCC, tried to enforce net neutrality, but a court ruled that it doesn't have the authority. This means that US Internet users can look forward to their service being downgraded so that ISPs can support their premium streaming customers.

As far as I can see, the best way to address this is for a collective law suit (a class-action suit) by ordinary subscribers against their ISPs for breach of contract. The main problem with this is that all subscribers' contracts are full of caveats and limitations to subscribers rights, all heavily biassed in favour of the ISPs and their financial interests. The good thing is that there is such a thing as de facto terms of contract: if a service or other benefit or right has been consistently granted in the past, for a significant time, it can become an enforceable term of contract; a certain quality of service or amount of bandwidth is, for many subscribers, just such a de facto term of contract, and if ISPs reduce the quality of service, it could be enforced at law.

Lets just hope that some subscribers have enough sense to get together and sue, using a law firm that really knows their law.