Here is Level 3′s plan to make interconnection fees a network neutrality issue

The gloves are coming off in the fight to prevent Internet service providers (ISPs) from charging content providers and middle mile transit companies a fee to deliver web content to the end consumer.

Level 3 Communications, a transit provider, along with Netflix, filed formal comments to the Federal Communications Commission, and both give examples of what they see as ISPs trying to collect tolls in the middle of the network. Level 3 has proposed that the FCC should require ISPs to interconnect on “commercially reasonable terms, without the payment of an access charge.” Level 3 wants the FCC to say that access charges, where an ISP charges those it exchanges traffic with for the privilege of reaching its users, are not commercially reasonable. It then suggests some basics on how the FCC should think about “commercially reasonable terms.”

Basically, Level 3 wants an ISP to add more capacity at congested areas at no charge or offer another point of interconnection in the geographic area where it will provide interconnection without charge. It’s unclear if Level 3′s definition of no charge, means that Level 3 won’t help offset the cost of the gear to provide more capacity. As a way of mitigating the burden such rules would lay on ISPs, Level 3 suggests that ISPs would only have to interconnect with large networks. It also notes that the FCC could implement this rule without imposing common carrier rules on ISPs, which the agency is clearly unwilling to do.