Terminate Net Neutrality, Lose Common Carrier Status?

In my very first post (which was really a test post) I wondered if the tradeoff for terminating net neutrality should be / would be loss of common carrier status. Common carrier status entitles the phone companies and ISPs to a number of rights or privileges. One that interests me is that as a common carrier, they are not liable for the content transitting their wires (whether it's voice, video, or bits of data, it's all bits of data these days). At GigaOM there's a post today making the argument that net neutrality is a basic tenet of the services the Telcos provide, it's a requirement based on their use of public property. Sort of like in return for use of the public commons for telco cable right-of-way they had to grant some amount of neutrality, not necessarily charging you and I different rates for the same call. The article is GigaOM : � Why Even Bells Need Net Neutrality, here's a quote:

The obligations established on a state by state basis sometimes include build-out requirements or other compensation, but they all specify that access to state right-of-way at largely no cost or limit requires common carrier status (aka net neutrality.) The loss of common carrier status invalidates the contracts. The Bell companies have no access to state right-of-way for deployment of private, closed, non-neutral, non-common carrier network deployments.

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