[governance] A lot of people here will likely disagree

[Mueller, Milton L]

The problem and differences stem from a higher level. Let me see if I can explain. You, and evidently the author of this paper, sees Internet merely in terms of a market, competition and consumer viewpoint - as is applicable to most economic good and services that we consume.
MM: I reject the distinction. Unless you believe in magic, every good or service of every type that exists in society exists in an economic context, and thus must have a budget, must consume labor and capital resources as inputs, must be sustained in some way economically. You can remove services from certain forms of competitive market pressures, e.g., by regulating and subsidizing them, but that does not exempt them from basic forms of supply and demand, or from the budget constraint (the subsidies must come from somewhere), or from economic choice behavior by consumers (e.g., if the regulated or government-supplied service is bad people will find alternatives, which may even be formally illegal).
This rhetorical ploy (oh, this is a SPECIAL kind of service and thus basic facts about demand, supply and economic behavior suddenly don’t apply, and we can make up a whole new set of rules) isn’t going to work. Sorry.
I, and many others, In fact I think most, see the Internet foremost as more of a media, as an essential communication service and as a knowledge space (aligned to fields like education, etc). The latter areas have always had public interest regulation standards which were different and much higher than for any normal market good or service.
MM: Again, your worldview is so defined by your  ideology it is often blinding you to basic facts. Print media in much of the world are specifically exempted from “public interest regulation” precisely because they are seen as public media that must be shielded from control by the state. Education is indeed taken over by the state in most contemporary societies, and run as a compulsory monopoly, although prior to the 18 and 19th century it was not. (Your definition of “always” is rather ahistorical.) A growing number of people in the US, by the way, are fleeing that education monopoly and its biggest victims are poorer areas but that is another story. The classical post, telephone and telegraph monopoly was institutionalized by nation-states from the 17th century not because of public interest standards but so the state could retain control of its territory by controlling communications and surveillance; the “public interest” rationalization came much, much later (early 20th century). And that public interest regulatory system was systematically dismantled – to everyone’s benefit – in the 80s and 90s, as information and telecom liberalization took hold, and that is why we have a global, free internet.
Now, we have to first agree to what should be the basic social, and thus political (meaning, relating to policy, regulation, etc). conception of the Internet. And I dont think we agree here. I know you have for decades been advocating the Internet as a bold new frontier which unlike earlier communications services need no special regulation at all. The problem is that I think most civil society people and groups, including here, do not see the Internet like that, and connect well to its basic, media, essential communication services, and knowledge sharing side.
MM: Why don’t you speak for Parminder and not for global civil society? If these groups are actually here (most of them are not) they can speak for themselves. If they are not here you probably don’t know much about what they want or what they like. I do know that most of the European and American civil society groups have opposed regulating the internet and e.g., would not look kindly upon an intergovernmental treaty asserting control of it, whether in the name of public interest or some other claimed standard. I also know that most NN advocates tend to view NN as a form of retaining the freedom of the Internet (from control by ISPs) and not as a form of open-ended “public interest regulation” by the state. Indeed, the claim that NN would open the door to that kind of regulation was one of the strongest arguments against it.
But since the two arguments, 'how can we deny something to those who have nothing' and 'can we deny the poor their choices' carry huge rhetoric value, and could even be quite persuasive if not inspected well, I must respond to them.
MM: These are rather simple, straightforward questions, not rhetoric. It will be interesting to see how you avoid answering them.
In most countries, media is regulated much beyond normal economic regulation. For instance, in India, there are regulations vis a vis clearly demarcating editorial content from paid-for one, even proportions of time/ space between the two kind of content, and so on...
MM: This is not “beyond normal economic regulation.” Compared to the panoply of regulations the Indian license Raj imposes on many many other businesses, it sounds typical. So there goes your exceptionalism argument. Or put differently, every industry is “exceptional” and people can come up with some reason to regulate it.
Now let’s say, a media house proposes that it will supply free or very cheap media especially for and to the poor if it is allowed to remain unbound by such regulatory 'burden'. My direct question is: would you recommend that such a thing be allowed, whether in the name of (argument 1), 'giving something to those who have nothing', or (argument 2) 'allowing them to exercise their free choice' (they are responsible adults after all)?  I expect you, but if not you most other people here, to say 'no' to any such offer.
MM: Let’s be more specific. I am going to offer free “Internet” service to the entire population of the Mumbai slums, but 50% of their time would be nothing but ads, and the other 50% would be whatever they wanted (Presumably, the 50/50 ratio violates current media regulations).
I would say, let it happen. I know you tend to believe that people are stupid and they need elite civil society leaders to tell them what is good for them, but I tend to support letting them decide for themselves whether the value proposition is worth it. I suspect not many people would go for that 50/50 proposition, and those who did would find ways to let the useless ads run by them while they did something else. And the offerer of such a service would have economic constraints, too: if the ads were so burdensome no one would take the service and no advertisers would pay them to be on it.
The problem with zero rating is that while it offers some immediate benefits, it takes the Internet ecology towards long term structural deformation and destruction...
MM: The paper I cited, while far from conclusive, at least offers a bit of evidence regarding this assertion. You offer nothing but assertion. Oh, and some dose of self-righteousness. This is an empirical question. Give me some evidence.
The issue is of crossing that sacred line regarding the Internet being that which  at once connects us to everyone and everything - and a zero rated service does not...
MM: Ah, I see you do not even know what zero-rating is. Zero rating does not involve access restrictions. It involves not counting particular services against a data consumption limit. Sorry we didn’t get this definition out of the way first.
Once we cross this line, we lose one of the true building blocks of a different communicative thinking and design that is behind the Internet that we know, and accept a new kind of a building block and design, handing it over to the commercial interests that hate the levelling tendency of the Internet, and want to build an alternative kind of communicative space which
MM: There are many commercial, as well as noncommercial interests who value the so-called levelling tendency of the internet, and insofar as the public demands this they will (and are) paying for it. The NN movement was backed by the OTT service providers (including Facebook and Google). Further, I don’t see any evidence that you really know shit about the “communicative thinking and design that is behind the internet.” But perhaps you can explain the end to end argument to me and how it meshes with your idea about centralized regulation.
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