Hi,
> How is what the telecoms are proposing different? Are they suggesting
> that they should be allowed to arbitrarily limit or increase the
> speeds with which certain sites or traffic can reach me, regardless of
> what that site and I are paying in terms of bandwidth?
It's a less confusing issue than the telecoms are trying to make out. Robert Cringely has an excellent discussion of the question in this week's column:
formatting link
As he explains it, the telecoms are almost solely interested in creating billable events. If this is correct, then as you hypothesize, they want to set any number of arbitrary limits so that they can bill you when you exceed the limits.George Mitchell