While Stacey (the author) isn't an engineer, she's probably talked to and gotten the perspectives of many more people in this space than most of us here.
What I do see is fear mongering built almost exclusively on "what they didn't say," "what ifs," and worst-case conjecture.
And I can appreciate those fears, but I also know they conveniently get more pageviews than addressing QoS, or the reality that traffic prioritzation must happen on some level (by type, not source) to accomodate delivering all these services.
It strikes me that the alternative to two pretty "pro-user" companies proposing a framework to deal with an unresolved set of technical issues is to have less open, less "pro user" companies deal with it with their lobbyists behind closed legislative doors. At least initially, I'll trust the devil I know.
I can imagine a scenario where FCC bans prioritization of any form, and the market rewards the company who actually builds out the highest capacity network, not the company who most effectively throttles traffic.
Is it prioritized to stop a DoS attack? How about to make SIP travel faster through the network than web traffic? What about things like DOCSIS, allowing quick bursts of fast speeds for your cable modem, so small downloads happen faster than sustained downloads?
Who determines what the priorities should be?
All of this angst is a result of lack of competition, which is the actual problem. It has almost nothing to do with prioritization of traffic. The fear, as best as I can tell, is that Comcast will one day so "No more Skype." and millions of people without another ISP choice will be stuck with it.
> All of this angst is a result of lack of competition, which is the
> actual problem. It has almost nothing to do with prioritization of traffic