Why regulation was a good idea

Another thing government does better than business: make businesses play nicely with each other.

Cable companies and telephone companies are fed up with the free Internet because they have to carry it on their backbones for free. So they're looking for ways to charge for use, including creating premium access for a fee.

One of the easily foreseen ways this "premium access" could manifest, as the Washington Post reports, looks like this:

[Y]ou may one day discover that Yahoo suddenly responds much faster to your inquiries, overriding your affinity for Google. Or that Amazon's Web site seems sluggish compared with eBay's.

...For the first time, the companies that own the equipment that delivers the Internet to your office, cubicle, den and dorm room could, for a price, give one company priority on their networks over another.

Perhaps it's time to re-regulate telecommunications? Or maybe I'm wrong, and we should de-regulate further. How about letting the Post Office charge more to deliver mail from certain buildings? Or how about letting electric utilities charge differential rates by political affiliation?