The discussion is a bit simplistic. Honestly it strikes me as someone with an Axe to grind, who's willing to drop some of the facts and why, to make their situation sound altruistic.

Level 3's trying to twist Comcast, etc. arm, so they get faster connections for Level 3's customers. The truth, is that the majority of Level 3's customers are likely corporate, paying for specific packet latencies, for use in things like VOIP and video conferencing. Having access to Level 3's network, for the majority of us, would only mean some extra hops to get to an uncongested peer. Level 3 would likely never handle one of our packets, for general internet access, but Level 3 fails to tell you that.

The story is little more than hand waving, and lacks real packet times and trace info, as this would detail the information on what the endpoints are, which would then be locations, most of us could care less about. Do you care if the VOIP phone for some fortune 500 corporation takes some extra hops, and has an occasional dropout, when the VP of operations is trying to do so from their home ISP?

Level 3 wants providers like Comcast, Time Warner, Charter, etc. to charge to charge their customers a bit more, to have more ports and routers in their data centers, so they can get more connectivity, so that if one of their fortune 500 customers is at home, their VOIP phone works great. The way this works normally is for Level 3 to pay for the extra routers, power, and space in the data center, to cover the increased service request. But Level 3 is trying to do this by using FUD, trying to convince you that your home internet service is being impacted.

Level 3, Masters of Spin!