Deutsche Telekom demands money from content providers - and in doing so, they are echoing the same tune as US telecoms:
Telekom CEO Kai-Uwe Ricke announced that the Telekom plans to charge providers like Google, Yahoo, Amazon, and eBay in the future. It cannot be, he told the "Wirtschaftswoche," that the customer alone pays for the broadband network.
And who guarantees that this will only affect large content providers? And who guarantees that small customers, private sites, etc., will still receive the same service as the big players? Because that's exactly what network neutrality means: that the service is the same for everyone involved. Even if Ricke acts as if he were the customers' advocate, it's really just about the backbone operators wanting to make more money, especially those in the telecommunications sector.
Heise makes it clearer what this demand from the telecoms means: ultimately, the providers will pay multiple times for the same service. First, they pay their host or provider for connectivity. Then they pay again for the same bytes to the backbones. And then the visitor also pays for the same bytes to their provider. This is classic telecoms rip-off (and by that, I mean more than just Deutsche Telekom).
Backbones actually finance themselves through peering agreements with other backbones (where there is asymmetric load distribution) and through their own direct connections to providers and users. Now they want money from parties with whom they do not even have contracts - but only through third-party contracts do they use the services of the telecoms. And that is simply extortion.