| It's not free hosting. It's not even hosting a webpage because it's not internet facing at all. Comcast customers can't visit the "free webpage" hosted on Verizon because it's not the internet we're discussing here. It's delivering a service to the local ISP network subscribers. The ISP is allowing Netflix to bring caches and servers to their interconnect so that the ISP can meet the demands of its users who are requesting that data. When should an ISP give out "free" things? When the quality of service for their customers requests depends on it. It's that simple: Customers request data, and ISPs have an obligation to deliver that data once it arrives at their local network. What you call "Free hosting" and "free upgrades", I call "upgrades for requested service paid for by my monthly bill". Because when I request data, and that data requires infrastructure to reach me adequately, then I am paying for that infrastructure by virtue of my monthly bill, and my decision to use part of my capped bandwidth on that service. Remember: residential internet is capped because "users must pay for their use, and infrastructure can't handle too much demand so we need to charge users to upgrade according to their usage pattern". So therefore, I'm paying for that Netflix interconnect, it's not free, I pay for it, because I pay for 300GB of data a month and all of the necessary infrastructure to deliver it! |