You are right that competition has been lacking but that is changing. Wireless ISP’s are popping up all over the place and this will only continue. Every phone, cable, and DSL provider planning to stay in business are looking at wireless because it will allow them to compete in any location regardless of who owns the copper in the ground. The government could help improve the situation by helping fund wireless start-ups.
If net neutrality passes it will interfere with an ISP’s ability to manage their network in a way that keeps the network running well. There are perfectly legal applications out there now and most likely many to be invented that allow a individual to negatively impact the network for others in their area. With net neutrality an ISP’s ability to control these applications would be gone, unless the ISP massively built out their infrastructure – raising prices.
Also, members of congress have been looking for ways to tax the internet for a long time. I would expect that the more involved they became the more likely it would be that they would find a reason to start taxing it. Just like they did with the PSTN.
As an IT department manager I prefer to see the government stay away from the internet.

Internet access needs to be treated like a utility akin to water, electricity, heating, etc – all industries that are highly regulated if only one provider is available. For example, I have no choice on where I get my water – none. It’s a regulated system which is priced by the city and priced as such – they can’t just jack the rates up by 30%. Of course they probably don’t make much of a profit on Water service, but it’s a necessity that they provide. As far as ISP’s If I don’t like Comcast’s rate hikes, I can’t really choose the local DSL provider – they are priced exactly the same. Heck, I can’t even choose another cable company because they don’t operate in my area. Of course Comcast can just jack up their rates and they don’t really have to worry about loosing customers all that much because there is no other alternative.

If they want deregulation, there has to be provisions for competition. We did it to the Ma bells back in the day and they are slowing re-forming again. The telco’s are wanting to have their cake and eat it too.

Take GMAIL for instance – I have complete control over what is marked as Spam and what is not – All that is done on the client software as a service that I agree to by the ISP. However Google doesn’t just block and never sends email from your neighbor unless you explicitly tell them to mark it as spam and delete it right away.

Network Neutrality isn’t a “everything goes, no rules whatsoever!”. Nobody is suggesting that at all.

As long as it is legal, the customer should have the ability to access it equally no matter who provides the pipe. Its about network connectivity to content that the customer accesses, not unsolicited emails sent by data services. Thats the exact reverse.

“There are only two real questions at the heart of the net neutrality debate: How can access providers who are also content suppliers, or have corporate partnerships with content providers, be prevented from favoring their or their partners’ content over outside content? And how will FCC policy insure that ample bandwidth is available so that caps and “reasonable network management” (in Comcast’s Orwellian phrase) is not onerous for the vast majority of end users?”

Besides, no mention ever gets made to the fact that back in the 90′s, the ISP’s were granted billions under the agreement to lay out fibre across the US, that never happened. The goverment for years ignored this and they are now starting to pay attention. It takes alot.