Stanford Law student Dana Powers points me to this Washington Post article where BellSouth is asking for the right to regulate quality of service on their network by discriminating based on what website (or other online service) customers are accessing. Not only do they want Yahoo to pay to have their webpage load faster than Google, but (more important) they also want Internet Phone services (VOIP) to pay for service levels that can compete with BellSouth's own service.
I agree with Dana when he says:
I believe this is a very bad idea. Perhaps the worst idea I've heard in a long time. BellSouth claims that this is similar to choosing between business class and first class service on plane flights. That's just plain wrong. The current choice between dial-up service, broadband, satellite or any of the other differentiated ISP services on the market already gives consumers an analogous choice. BellSouth's proposal is more akin to letting Ford cut a deal that only lets drivers of Ford vehicles use HOV lanes. It is bad policy and it is a backdoor regulation of speech.