Net Neutrality Dispute Solution. It's about words.

Is it a boat or is it a ship? Or is it just semantics?

The FCC issued a set of rules that prevented companies such as AT&T or Verizon, the communication giants, from charging different prices to different companies for delivering the same service.

The cable and telecommunication giants invested $billions in building a communication infrastructure and they believe they should have the right to deliver what they want and charge what they want on the communications structure they built. The court agreed.

As usual the court decision hinged on a semantic technicality. For example, if the FCC had classified broadband as an "information service" not a "telecommunication service", then the FCC could have imposed "common carrier" restrictions prohibiting discrimination, ergo Internet neutrality.

Under the court determination, the giants could charge Google a premium price for Youtube and let a Youtube competitor owned by AT&T, for example, deliver its video content for free. The giants own the delivery pipes. Google and dozens of other firms own content that needs the pipes to deliver things or activities that you and I would like to use. The other technicality is that while it is true they built the pipes, they did this under a license from the FCC, which is a department of our federal government, which ostensibly acts in our best interests.

A similar situation could have happened in the automobile industry if we would have allowed each car company to build their own roads. We did not. The roads were funded by the feds, from taxes, and as a result the roads are relatively free for all to  use and all cars work on all these roads. Otherwise we might have had to pay a fee to General Motors to drive our Toyota on GM roads. It is not too late for this situation to happen in the telecommunication industry and that would solve the problem. The Fed purchases the pipes from all the giants that built the pipes. The Fed sub-contracts back to the giants the task of operating and maintenance of the pipes. The content providers get free access to the pipes.

The cost is ultimately born by the taxpayer anyway, as it is in the 42,000 miles of interstate highway systems, but the costly territorial disputes about net neutrality are eliminated.

Or they could simply reclassify broadband to a "telecommunication service" and then the FCC rules on net neutrality would stick. I like my option the best, but I am betting on the reclassification option to be implemented.

It is just semantics.