Verizon has become the latest cash-hungry telephone carrier to start waving the "It's my network and I'll charge if I want to" banner. (hat tip to Om Malik). During an interview with the Wall St. Journal about the growing threat to net neutrality, Verizon CEO Irving Seidenberg huffed and puffed, "We have to make sure they don't sit on our network and chew up our capacity." It's amazing how these telecom CEOs conveniently forget facts such as consumers have paid for these networks so its our network, not Verizon's. As well, carriers are already making lots of money charging to connect Web servers to the network. The reality is carriers are watching their lucrative local business slip away to cablecos and folks such as Vonage so their "solution" is charging downstream tollgate fees rather than developing new creative services that consumers/companies are willing to purchase. I wrote a in-depth feature on the net neutrality issue last week. You can check it out here.