The NYT Paywall and Comcast

If the Internet were truly something other than a non-competitive utility, why wouldn't we see Comcast negotiating to bring the content of the New York Times to all its subscribers at no additional cost to them?

Time Warner Cable and the NFL Network are embroiled in a battle over carriage of the station based on cost and cable tier, but that is only made possible by the fact that there are lots of cable companies that compete to bring the best programming, whether HBO, ShowTime, or the NFL Network.

If Comcast truly wanted both to differentiate and prove the merits of a non-neutral Internet, they would seek to make deal with content publishers like the Times. But they are not. It is as if they themselves are relegated to the facts that they are a unconcerned middleman in the way of publishers and subscribers and that the industry itself is non-competitive. After all, what point is differentiation when Comcast is the only provider to my apartment?