So, if you're using it more heavily, upgrades will be needed sooner. The infrastructure is to access something free, but certain things cost Comcast infinitesimally more than other things.

In much the same way, you pay a taxi cab money to use their car for access to nominally free roads. But, if you take 3 other people, and use slightly more resources, meaning the car will have to be repaired ever so slightly sooner, the taxi cab charges a slightly higher rate.

This is no different.

Taxi cabs clearly state 'all passengers ride for the price of one'. If they had a problem with it, they'd charge each passenger separately. So if Comcast has a problem, it should change its pricing structure.

I still don't understand.

Comcast has to invest in infrastructure to make their service work. Ford has to invest in factories to build their cars. It's an expense of doing business. Charge enough to cover that.

That's not really what people are worried about with net neutrality. There are countries without any laws at all defending net neutrality and they don't charge for how much you use, they charge for the parts of the Internet you use. Want to use social media? That's $5.99 a month! Want to play video games? That's $9.99 a month! And this is not a piecemeal thing where you just pay that price, that's on top of the price you pay for Internet each month. Net Neutrality was specifically set up to stop companies from doing this type of pricing.

In addition what about small businesses/free sites that want to show content? If Comcast starts charging a premium to have your content show up at anything above 512kbps, even though that company is not using any large amount of bandwidth, there's nothing that company can do, and no protection against it.

No, they pay for their infrastructure.

And generally speaking, telecom operators pay for upgrades when it is projected those upgrades can be monetized, or in the face of a catastrophic failure to predict demand (although they prefer to throttle in that case).

So, if you're using it more heavily, upgrades will be needed sooner. The infrastructure is to access something free, but certain things cost Comcast infinitesimally more than other things.

One of the most essential and expensive assets to wired telecom operators are rights of way-- much like spectrum is for wireless operators. These are assets that often are public. In principle access to these assets are granted to entities in order to enable them to offer services that benefit citizens, and with that access comes reasonable regulation-- such as ensuring equal access and reasonable pricing.

What is worthy of note is that while it's always possible to get a group of citizens out to protest a cell tower, nobody seems to be around when exclusivity deals for wired operators are hammered out, and it's resulted in a classic case of regulatory capture. Local regulation of cable and telephone operators now exists primarily to enforce exclusivity arrangements to artificially raise barriers to entry, and other requirements regarding coverage and mandatory upgrades go unmet. VZW has ongoing disputes with the municipalities of Boston, New York and others over these very issues.

Net Neutrality was an essential concept to define what a company means when it says it is selling "Internet access" and to guarantee what used to be the absolute minimum standard of service-- "best effort".

In much the same way, you pay a taxi cab money to use their car for access to nominally free roads. But, if you take 3 other people, and use slightly more resources, meaning the car will have to be repaired ever so slightly sooner, the taxi cab charges a slightly higher rate.

That is literally NOT how taxis work. It is how illegal taxis work.

So, if you're using it more heavily, upgrades will be needed sooner. The infrastructure is to access something free, but certain things cost Comcast infinitesimally more than other things.

In much the same way, you pay a taxi cab money to use their car for access to nominally free roads. But, if you take 3 other people, and use slightly more resources, meaning the car will have to be repaired ever so slightly sooner, the taxi cab charges a slightly higher rate.

This is no different.

Almost all cable networks and infrastructure build-outs were done with subsidies, or at the very least charters from the local governments. And, after they got the people to pay for it, they almost always have a legal restriction that means only they are allowed to be the cable company in that area totally removing choice and competition.

A government subsidized business with government protected monopoly power should be subject to government regulation.

Also, your car analogy is pretty misleading. even though both are fractionally higher uses, the mechanical and moving parts are far more susceptible to load-variable wear than Cable equipment, which in almost all cases has no internal moving parts.

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