Those of us who think of the World Wide Web as oxygen are going to find ourselves panting for breath if this argument, is resolved the wrong way.So what's new you might ask, as telcos seek the ability to charge proportionally for the different burdens that different applications impose on their internet infrastructure.
What's new is the latest row over who runs the Internet should get us thinking about rewriting the rules of competitive markets.
First the obvious argument. The principle of network neutrality that lies behind the Internet means that the relationship between for example Yahoo or Google and a telecommunications company has no effect on our access to Yahoo or Google. Now the telcos want to bring differentiated services to the internet.
Over the past five years the major telecommunications companies world-wide have been preparing their own mini-Internets in preparation for delivering multi-channel TV.
The investments, that run into the billions to create a broadband IP network need recouping and it's not at all clear that the IPTV services will deliver the returns.
The critical factor is the culture of "free" evident in the early days of the web and reintroduced to startling effect by Google.
By transferring TV and newspaper dollars to the delivery of web audiences Google is applying the oxygen principle not just to yesterday's Internet activity but to anything that can be conducted over the Web. Most recently spreadsheets, soon to be followed by word processing and, the ever present, mass storage.
In this environment we find it impossible to accept anything other than network neutrality as an organising theory.
Telcos oppose it because they are old fashioned rentiers at heart. They see the Web as their property and they want landlord rights.
They belong to that community of companies such as Tobacco that need to develop theories of corporate obsolescence.
Having tried to be systems integrators in the 1990s and compete with the large systems houses for corporate services they came to the 21st century seeing themselves as media companies.
Their first acts as media companies, after deciding to roll out broadband capacity, was to offer to distribute Hollywood films and top rating TV programmes – in other words bringing nothing new to the mix.
Right now they're busy with user generated content but some way behind the gain line.
What we're witnessing here is the pristine capitalist philosophy of aiming for monopoly and compromising along the way, unravelling. Telcos, like energy companies, are unable to adapt to truly competitive environments and don't want to.
To counter the threat of the rentier we need to write into the theory of competitive markets the right for executives to enter their companies into a graceful decline.
The Internet's future actually relies on a very peculiar adaption. The problem will disappear only by rewarding telco executives for developing a strategy of reversal. For unpicking and shrinking their empires. For doing the opposite of what they were trained to do.
