Sasha gave me the heads-up about this article in the Times about AOL & Yahoo’s plan to create a “tier” for email service. The plan would allow companies to pay a premium to get their mail to your inbox in a more reliable manner, bypassing these companies’ spam filters.

Today Kevin Drum of the Washington Monthly weighs in on the matter, highlighting that it may be another front in the network neutrality war.

But, I’m not too concerned about this – not nearly as concerned as I am about the telco’s plans to create a tiered Internet.

Why?

Well, AOL & Yahoo are Internet service provides (ISP’s). In Yahoo’s case, they are (often) just a service provider. They operate closer to the ends of the network -- they don’t control the network.

But BellSouth, Verizon, Quest, and AT&T do own the network. They control the pipes that AOL and Yahoo’s content flow over.

If I don’t like Yahoo charging my bank to send me a “guaranteed-received” email, or if I don’t like that emails from my friends keep getting caught in their spam filters -- well I can just choose another service provider. This is a relatively competitive sector.

But broadband access isn’t a competitive sector. It’s a duopoly. If both of my local providers (AT&T and Comcast) decide to segregate content that I want to see, to a slower slum Internet, I have no other options.

This is why it is vitally important for Congress to do something about network neutrality. There’s a senate commerce committee hearing on the matter this Tuesday. Stay tuned.