A new version of an old argument about how to regulate telecommunications is now playing out in Washington – and this time, for me, it's personal.

The name of this latest debate is "net neutrality," and it has to do with whether cable and telephone companies should be allowed to provide their broadband customers with better, faster access to online sites that are willing and able to pay for the privilege. A phone company such as Verizon, which provides broadband DSL connections to millions of American customers, might look to cut a special deal with Google that would give people who access the internet via Verizon faster connections to Google than to other search engines. Google, of course, would pay for that.

Similarly, Verizon might decide to favour its own (emerging) television services over those of others; if you wanted to offer online video to Verizon broadband customers, you might find yourself competing with a Verizon service that offered faster downloads (unless, presumably, you were willing to pay for equal treatment). While Verizon and other telephone and cable companies have not announced plans for special premium services, they have complained about what they allege is freeloading by Google and others on their networks, and have clearly signalled their intent to move in that direction.

The prospect of the internet evolving into a multi-tiered network in which some bits are treated differently from others has alarmed both internet activists and major internet content providers such as Google, Amazon and eBay. They are now pushing for legislation that would require broadband providers to treat all internet traffic equally, and the US Senate's Commerce Committee held lively hearings last week on the subject.

The telephone and cable companies argue, rationally enough, that such rules would have the effect of discouraging investment in better, faster broadband networks. It's an argument very familiar to followers of America's decades-long telecom regulation wars: phone companies fought for years against laws that required them to allow third parties to offer services over their networks at favourable prices. Such rules, the phone companies argued, made it impossible for them to get a good return on network investment.

Ultimately the phone companies won that battle, and because telephone and cable companies have immense clout in Washington, they are likely to win the net neutrality debate too, at least in the short run. But while I am constitutionally suspect of anything that is supported so unanimously by Google, Microsoft, Amazon, eBay, and InterActiveCorp, in this case I think they are right. Without legislation, the internet might very well become a medium that reinforces large, entrenched interests, rather than serving as the transformative hothouse of innovation that we have come to know.

My very small online publishing company, NewWest.Net, is just the kind of business that was made possible by the internet. With dirt-cheap software and a very small but very enthusiastic staff, we're competing with century-old media giants to provide news, information and community services in the Rocky Mountain West. If we were required to pay additional fees to various internet service providers in order to assure that people could visit and use our site just as quickly and easily as a site, from, say, Time Warner, I'm not at all sure we could even be in business.

Quite simply, an internet in which content providers have to pay a premium to reach their customers effectively (on top of the payments those customers already make for their internet service, and the payments content providers already make to ISPs for bandwidth) will be an internet that favours the largest and wealthiest players. Google and Microsoft, I'm sure, will be fine no matter what happens. But the same cannot be said for the hundreds of thousands of small companies that make the net such an extraordinary platform for creativity, innovation, and new types of enterprise.

Indeed, the idea of a multi-tiered internet runs counter to the very principle that makes any network successful. Whether it's a phone service or dating service, the more people who are connected to a network, the more valuable and useful that network becomes. Creating an elite network for those who can pay will diminish the appeal of the network as a whole; if highways were only available to those paying expensive tolls, and everyone else had to crawl along pot-holed surface streets, you can bet there would be a lot less driving.

Politicians like to mouth support for entrepreneurship and innovation before voting in favour of the corporate interests that pay to get them elected. I can only hope it doesn't play out that way this time around.

Jonathan Weber is the founder and editor in chief of NewWest.Net, a new type of regional news and information service focused on the Rocky Mountain West in the United States. He was previously the co-founder and editor in chief of the Industry Standard

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