Net neutrality denies consumers the benefit of market segmentation

Net neutrality is the Henry Ford of telecom policies: it says you can have any speed, quality and price of Internet so long as it's the same as that which everyone else gets. This lack of segmentation along the traditional dimensions of price, quality and responsiveness particularly harms the poor. This is because the rich may not get all the bells and whistles they want and can afford but They Still Get Service while the now mandatory 'average'
package must be tuned to the highest total net profit volume. And given one price, this will inevitably be too high for the poor.

Besides, the connectivity market is crawling with competitors bringing rapidly improving technologies to the market. Any average pricing mandate would be horribly anti competitive given new services tend to offer different mixes of price and value and then ride the scale curve down as they gain traction.

There are several great examples of how Faceboook, Google and Wikipedia created their own light versions and persuaded carriers to provide them free to feature phone users in Africa. Classic market and price segmentation in service to the poor. You can read about them at the link.

Hattip Marginalrevolution.com

http://theumlaut.com/2014/04/30/how-net-neutrality-hurts-the-poor/