Is Balkinization bad? We have already seen balkinization on the internet and consumers have soundly rejected it. Remember Compuserve, Prodigy et al of the 80s? There's a reason they aren't around. As far as new business models coming up - the internet produces them all the time. Balkanizing the Internet would stifle development. Let's say you develop a killer new web application - except of the end to end principle network we now have you would need to do a new version of your application for each high speed internet access provider. That's going to make your development vastly more expensive and since you will need to cut a check to each telco to make sure your application works only the very largest firms could afford to do so.