Vaizey said ISPs must be free to experiment with new charges to help pay for expanded Internet services, but critics, like the FSC, say the move could harm free speech and stifle innovation.
"The FSC supports net neutrality," FSC Board of Directors chair and attorney Jeffrey Douglas told XBIZ.
"Assigning to government the power to advantage certain users over others, no matter how reasonable the proposed advantages may seem on face value, allows government to give others advantages in the future. This is a potentially destructive and censorious power."
ISPs are supposed to treat all web traffic equally and President Barack Obama has backed that idea. Regulators have threatened legal action against ISPs that block or restrict access to sites.
The E.U. has backed traffic management, where traffic from one source is favored over another, but with greater transparency to ensure the Internet remains open.
Vaizey said most ISPs already carried out traffic management “to ensure the smooth running of their networks” without any impact on competition or consumer rights.
"We have got to continue to encourage the market to innovate and experiment with different business models and ways of providing consumers with what they want,” he said.
"This could include the evolution of a two-sided market where consumers and content providers could choose to pay for differing levels of quality of service."
He also suggests that content makers could be charged for the first time for the use of the ISP's networks — provided they too were clear about what they were getting.
