[dasil003]

Everyone is paying for Internet access already. Customers are ostensibly paying for a certain amount of bandwidth, Netflix is providing for a certain amount of bandwidth. ISPs now want more money because "Netflix is generating so much traffic". Your point is essentially that there is no indication they would be asking consumers for more money to use Netflix, except they are doing something even slimier which is throttling Netflix and threatening to sue Netflix for revealing whose fault it is that the customer is not getting what they pay for. Instead of charging more for a specific service they essentially make it impossible to use in their monopolized customer base and hold up their hands like they're doing nothing.

Given the ugliness of what they are doing, the only reason I agree they probably wouldn't charge for tiered service is because they probably don't yet have the balls to take that to the court of public opinion, but in their heart of hearts I'm sure they'd love to triple dip by trolling (in the under-the-bridge sense) Netflix and also charging extra to consumers. If they don't get smacked down now I fully believe they'll take it there.

The disgusting thing is they pretend like they own the Internet rather than acknowledging that Internet only works, exists, and has created their market because of peering agreements. The minute networks start trying to nickel and dime each other the whole thing unravels. God we need to get more lobbyists on the right side of this issue into Washington, and hopefully a fewer congresspeople who were born after the invention of color television.