Regulation, corporations, and the public good
Well, I imagine that given no regulation, ISPs may work out service plans similar to cable television -- if you want to play WoW online, then you will either need a subscription which includes that service or you will have to put up with a high-latency, low-bandwidth connection. Want to stream Hulu? You will need to buy that service package from your provider. Maximal profit would be served if Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon were offered in separate packages, each priced separately. Similar packaging would be offered for gaming, I suppose.
Do you think that Comcast and Verizon would never shove that down your throats? Dream on. It works for cable TV, despite the fact that consumers hate it. But consumers have no choice. And most home internet users have no choice of ISP, either.
Why hasn't it happened yet? Because the internet is much younger than television, and the service niche is still evolving.
Corporations have one intrinsic mandate: to maximize profits. It's unrealistic to expect them to maximize the public good instead. This suggests a general rule: if a behavior destructive of the public good will be profitable, then a corporation will act contrary to the public good unless forced -- by law, by regulation -- to do otherwise.
This is supported historically. The Ethyl Corp knew fairly early in the twentieth century that the lead compounds they sold as gasoline additives were toxic. Early mishaps in their own plants resulted in poisoned, debilitated employees. But they denied lead's toxicity, and tried for decades to destroy researchers who showed that lead is a neurotoxin.
If a practice is profitable but harmful to the public, then a corporation will harm the public in order to profit.
Net neutrality? Not on a par with peddling tobacco or leaded gasoline, nor with hazardous workplaces or food contamination. As with cable TV, you can simply choose to go without high-speed streaming or gaming. And you may be healthier and happier for it... ;)
So perhaps the FAA action (or refusal to act) is unimportant. But I suspect that, in a few years, USians will look back to the days of open internet access with a certain amount of nostalgia.