Net neutrality advocates argue that network providers have the ability and the incentive to block access by consumers to the web sites of their choice. At a Mar. 14th Senate Commerce Committee hearing featuring several high-placed Wall Street analysts, this question was addressed:

SEN. STEVENS: Let me ask you about this net neutrality problem that two of you have mentioned substantially. Do you think a network operator could block access to a company like Google or Yahoo! and really get away with it?

MR. SZYMCZAK (JPMorgan): I think that would be very difficult to sustain on an ongoing basis because if we think about it in a competitive nature, if the phone company were to block it, a lot of customers would switch within that day or the next day to a cable operator. So it would always offer opportunities to the fellow who is not blocking it to take customers. So I think that pressure will make it very difficult to block access to an important service like that.

SEN. STEVENS: Go head, Mr. Bourkoff.

MR. BOURKOFF (UBS Investment Research): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I agree. I think that blocking access would be a devastating outcome, but I think the middle ground is probably that there has to be a tiering structure put in place where some of the higher capacity content over the Internet that really requires a lot more bandwidth, you know, may have to pay more for packet prioritization for some of that content, otherwise there is a risk that the cap ex cycle will continue to increase and that there may be a sort of an un-equitable distribution of that capacity. So there should be equal access, in my view, of video content across the spectrum, but maybe at a defined capacity level. If it gets above or below that, there may be a tiering structure which could help differentiate that.