Roger: Rural communities having two or fewer options doesn't change "at most...duopoly" into a true statement. I'll certainly agree with you that there are locations with 1 and even 0 options. But I recently saw an estimate somewhere that more than 60% (not sure if this was the exact figure but it was >50%) of zip codes have 4 or more broadband options. Sounds like you'd like to see a universal service fund for broadband. As for QoS, any proposal that bans what my employer, Global Crossing, does with it today strikes me as idiotic. We carry public Internet, VoIP, IP-VPN, and IP-Video traffic over the same core network, using QoS to give preference to VoIP, IP-Video, and IP-VPN over public Internet in conditions of congestion (which we try very hard to avoid, but it happens--e.g., a nice-sized DDoS attack can make it happen). Dave Siegel has covered this in a bit more detail at http://blogs.globalcrossing.com/tiered-peering and Xiao Xipeng has discussed it here (PDF): http://www.eurongi2006.upv.es/download/Xiao_Xipeng_NGI2006.pdf