Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) Chairman Ivan Seidenberg on Wednesday had some harsh words for the Federal Communications Commission a day ahead of its planned vote on open Internet rules, adding to what has become a fever pitch of public debate over the proposal.

The speech was delivered on the same day that 30 business investors in technology companies sent a letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski praising the rules.

In a speech before the SUPERCOMM 2009 conference in Chicago, Mr. Seidenberg said it would be a “mistake, pure and simple” for the FCC to impose a “burdensome regime” of regulation on the Internet, particularly if the rules apply only to Internet service providers like Verizon and not Web companies like Google Inc. (GOOG).

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Given the level of sturm and drang over the FCC’s proposed net-neutrality rules over the past week, it might be a little hard to believe the FCC hasn’t even released its proposal yet. The earliest anyone outside of the agency will see the FCC’s 50-ish page proposal is Thursday.

That hasn’t stopped intense lobbying on both sides, however, and today’s Net-Neutrality Letter of the Day belongs to the Sand Hill crowd, which is (not surprisingly) expressing its support for net-neutrality rules.

“As business investors in technology companies, we have first-hand experience with the importance of a guaranteeing an open market for new applications and services on the Internet,” wrote a group of 30 venture capitalists in a letter to (former VC, now FCC Chairman) Julius Genachowski.

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AT&T’s (ATT) top lobbyist, Jim Cicconi, sent a letter to all of the telecom giant’s 300,000 employees on Sunday, urging them to express their concerns over a net neutrality proposal under consideration by the Federal Communications Commission. Check out his letter and comments on the Actuarian Outpost Web site.

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In the long fight over open Internet, or net neutrality, rules on Internet providers, we’re still essentially in pre-game.

You’d never know it from the flurry of lobbying across the country last week.

On Friday, it was House Democrats’ turn, when 72 members sent a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski, asking him to soften a net-neutrality proposal the agency is expected to approve next week.

The lawmakers urged the FCC to “carefully consider the full range of potential consequences that government action may have on network investment,” while crafting the proposed rules. Phone and cable companies have been making similar points to the FCC, arguing the agency should avoid rules that will hobble their ability to manage their networks and stifle investment.

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Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski is proposing that the agency apply tougher open-Internet rules broadly, raising concerns of cable and phone companies and some lawmakers that the government could try to control efforts to offer products such as digital cable or premium business services.

Mr. Genachowski’s proposal suggests everything in the Internet pipe is covered by rules prohibiting discrimination against any legal Internet traffic, known as net neutrality, unless the agency says otherwise, according to FCC officials familiar with a draft circulating in the agency.

Internet providers could seek exemptions for so-called premium managed services, like private corporate data networks or pay-TV services, which require guaranteed levels of data speed.

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Internet-service providers may be worried about the Federal Communications Commission’s net-neutrality guidelines, but the analysts who cover them?

Not so much. In recent days, more than one has referred to the proposed rules as “a solution in search of a problem.”

The FCC supports net neutrality and wants to ensure that broadband providers don’t block access to certain sites or impede competitors’ services while prioritizing their own. Julius Genachowski, the agency’s chairman, announced its net-neutrality principles Monday, and cable and wireless carriers, as well as some lawmakers, were quick to signal their discomfort.

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The junior Senator from Minnesota, Al Franken, asked a decidedly unfunny question Wednesday afternoon when it was his turn to quiz Supreme Court nominee Sonya Sotomayor.

Franken turned to the contentious issue of net neutrality, or rules that would require cable and phone companies to treat legal Internet traffic equally and would prevent the creation of a two-tiered system that would allow speedier deliver of premium services.

Public interest groups have pressed Congress to pass explicit rules requiring net neutrality since it’s not entirely clear the FCC has authority to prevent Internet providers from blocking or delaying some Internet traffic.

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It’s sometimes quite amusing to watch how various economic ecosystems grow, where multiple companies have symbiotic relationships, and then start to freak out when they think that other companies in the ecosystem are somehow earning “too much.” That, of course, is at the heart of many recent battles we’ve seen–from net neutrality (where the ISPs think Google is earning too much) to the music industry (where record labels think ISPs and Apple are earning too much). But sometimes it leads to rather amusing contrasts. For example, up in Canada, the entertainment industry is complaining that ISPs earn too much, and therefore are pushing for laws that would require broadband providers to pay money to the entertainment industry to develop new content.

But contrast that to the situation in the U.K., where there’s an ongoing push for content companies to pay extra to help subsidize the cost of broadband deployments. The argument there is that all the content that’s being put online is creating a drain on broadband network resources. But, isn’t that exactly what the content creators in Canada are saying is a “free ride” for the ISPs?

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If there’s any one thing that stands to determine the future of news brands, it is the current debate in Washington over net neutrality legislation. Why is net neutrality so important?

It is the building block of the abundance-based economy on the Internet.

Changing the cost structure of online publishing would allow the larger organizations to, essentially, raise the cost of publishing back to its former level. If it suddenly costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to publish again, then news brands have their monopoly back, and the ad dollars start rolling in.

Let me explain how this works.

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The digital Disneyland of the future–where we freely work and play online–may be at risk. Why? Because, some argue, broadband carriers can’t support it. The Internet’s “free ride” culture has led to more people downloading gigabytes of data at practically no cost. Even if broadband infrastructure’s capacity doubled or tripled, there’s no avoiding the equivalent of an abrupt work stoppage.

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If you thought that federal regulators were upset at Comcast’s throttling of BitTorrent, wait until they start scrutinizing what wireless providers are doing. Comcast’s offense was merely to slow or abort some BitTorrent transfers. AT&T Wireless goes much further and flatly bans all “peer-to-peer file sharing” and “downloading movies.” Verizon Wireless’s terms of service also single out P2P applications.

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Service providers argue that if net neutrality is not enforced, they will have sufficient incentives to build special high-quality channels that will take the Internet to the next level of its evolution. But what if they do get their wish, net neutrality is consigned to the dustbin, and they do build their new services, but nobody uses them? If the networks that are built are the ones that are publicly discussed, that is a likely prospect. What service providers publicly promise to do, if they are given complete control of their networks, is to build special facilities for streaming movies. But there are two fatal defects to that promise. One is that movies are unlikely to offer all that much revenue. The other is that delivering movies in real-time streaming mode is the wrong solution, expensive and unnecessary.

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Comcast Corp. rightfully received a smackdown from the Federal Communications Commission last week for not telling customers that it was blocking some of them from using peer-to-peer services to download videos and other content off the Internet.

Web surfers may want to pause before cheering, though, as some are warning that the move could lead the way to Internet metering–under which people would be charged based on their usage levels instead of the traditional flat rate.

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The Federal Communications Commission’s order last Friday in the Comcast-BitTorrent dispute should help ensure that today’s broadband networks remain open platforms to the Internet. But more broadly, the recent attention on Comcast–and on Time Warner’s recently launched trial of “consumption-based billing”–raises the question: what is a reasonable approach for broadband networks to manage their Internet traffic?

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Americans today spend almost as much on bandwidth–the capacity to move information–as we do on energy. A family of four likely spends several hundred dollars a month on cellphones, cable television and Internet connections, which is about what we spend on gas and heating oil. Just as the industrial revolution depended on oil and other energy sources, the information revolution is fueled by bandwidth. If we aren’t careful, we’re going to repeat the history of the oil industry by creating a bandwidth cartel.

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