The best short comment I've read on the mating dance between Verizon and Google is the Great Grimmelmann's About That Open Internet Thing.
Recent Bluessky Posts- They stole $10 million of public funds but because no one admits to being able to remember who did it, they'll get away with it. Really. Even this over-boggled brain boggles. Is there no paper trail when Florida spends $10 million? www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/g... August 27, 2026 Michael Froomkin
- Yes he was much worse in other famous cases. August 25, 2026 Michael Froomkin
- Yes indeed Miami is a lizard wonderland. (And this story has a guide with photos.) Could it explain out politics? www.miamiherald.com/news/local/e... August 25, 2026 Michael Froomkin
- Actually Cardozo very frequently misstated precedent to make it look like what he was doing was less avulsive. That's why Posner loved him... August 25, 2026 Michael Froomkin
- Common law has scope for judicial invention. So too equity, even federal, although like cases (however defined) demand like treatment. And I believe elected state court judges have some extra legitimacy for creativity more generally. None of which justifies what the Six are doing. August 25, 2026 Michael Froomkin
I’ve been very confused by this (and in theory I’m someone who should understand it pretty well) but I think things are starting to gel for me. I find the notion that all packets should be treated equally to be obviously ridiculous and I don’t think that’s what’s actually at issue in most cases. The problem here is that wireline networks are heavily overprovisioned – in the backbones, at least, there’s bandwidth to burn. That’s not the case in mobile cellular networks, however, and there’s more congestion and competition for a place in the queues. Traditional best-effort delivery will probably screw nearly everyone – clearly you don’t want “infrastructure” (routing, for example) packets being treated equally with web browser traffic and you probably don’t want real-time voice being treated equally with web browser traffic, either.
I don’t like slippery slope arguments but I suppose they’re unavoidable. So here, the question becomes “once you start making different guarantees about different kinds of traffic, how do you prevent the carriers turning this into a mechanism to squeeze more money out of customers?” Or at least that’s my understanding of the question. I don’t know what the answer is other than to point out that there’s already some traffic differentiating going on, but it’s invisible to users. I just really don’t know here, but the bottom line is that I find the suggestion that there should be no differentiation in traffic policy to be really odd. And I’ll note that it’s *especially* odd coming from AT&T customers .