I’m not sure whether to agree or disagree with your point, Chris. On the one hand, you are absolutely right- the “protectionist” market share thinking is obvious in AT&T’s (and other telco/service providers) thinking.

On the other hand, I’ve ranted in the past about the “if it isn’t growing, it’s dead” thinking that exists throughout the market. Profit isn’t enough- profit has to be growing each year: 10% this year, 12% next, 15% the year after that. If it isn’t, you lay people off… not because your company is losing money, just because the rate at which your profit is growing has stalled. The corporate executives aren’t entirely to blame for this- the stock market, right down to ma and pa, all exist in a culture of greed that defies reason. I’m part of it, and it disgusts me: the only thing in nature that grows without bounds is cancer: and that is an apt and distressing analogy for most corporate management plans.

If I point out to one of these “greed is good” sorts that extending growth perpetually into the future is insanity, their response is: only if you assume we can’t create new markets. And there lies the root of my uncertainty regarding agreeing or disagreeing with you, Chris: if I agree with you, I’m saying that the people who use the “growth can be perpetual so long as we keep finding new things to sell the plebes” argument must be right. From there, it is a small step to losing my entire “it makes no sense to lay people off for missing profit *growth* targets” argument.

Mind you… if you asked AT&T and the other anti-net neutrality lobbyists, they’d say that what they are trying to do is exactly what you are saying they aren’t doing: creating a new service or product. The new service or product is “enhanced service specific data rate delivery guarantees”. For an extra fee, they’ll make sure your traffic gets to and from Google, iTunes, or Youtube on a “priority” basis, without being shunted onto low speed/high latency links. They can charge you service by service: one fee for iTunes, another for Youtube, and yet another for your favorite computer game. And at the same time, they can likewise be charging a fee to iTunes, Youtube, and your game provider. This is a service that didn’t exist before, and all they need to do in order to start selling it is be given the right to throttle all of your traffic to start with, so they can then parcel out the “improved” extra fee service for you.

It isn’t a market share thing at all: they are creating a brand new product, and all they need is the ability to break the existing product you are already paying for so they can charge you extra to make it work again. That way they won’t have to spend any of their money on actually building any new infrastructure- it is brilliant!