Making Internet service a utility—what’s the worst that could happen?
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We're literally at the point now with this pandemic that broadband access is no longer a luxury but a necessity. They need to take that into consideration in regards to how they structure this thing.
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Agreed. The biggest evidence I see for this is schools shifting to remote learning. There is currently a patchwork of programs and school districts that are trying to insure that poor families have access to the Internet so their kids can learn from home. But I fear that many kids are going to fall through the cracks of these programs and will be left out of remote learning entirely.
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It's time to face the fact that the ONLY way forward that makes sense is for municipalities to take over providing the physical infastructure. On each and every one of the NCTA's arguments, a municipality would stomp all over them:
The right to stop service
If ISPs are worried about not being able to stop unprofitable service, then take profit out as a motive. Or at very lease allow sufficient competition so that if one provider finds something unprofitable, a different provide might be able to turn a buck. Municipalities should be installing and maintaining fiber for the good of their community. If the pandemic has shown one thing it's that good, fast, cheap internet service is going to be a major component of local competitiveness going forward. Want a business to locate in your area? Want to be attractive to tech workers? Better have cheap, world-class internet service.
Rules affect small ISPs, too
Again, who better to serve small communities than a small community. If they need monetary help to maintain the physical infrastructure, well, we've already got taxes aimed directly at that problem. Get the incumbents and their profits out of the way and you'll have more money for small municipal ISPs.
Pole attachment rates
IF this is an actual problem, who better to negotiate with the pole owners than the regulators of the pole owners? Municipalities carry a lot more weight here than ISPs.
Tariffs
Municipalities are generally much more transparent about fees and tariffs than companies. They have to be, they're directly answerable to taxpayers.
Uncertainty
Most of the uncertainty they bitch about is to their bottom line. I'd argue that a municipality providing the physical infrastructure to all ISPs that want to compete would actually take a huge amount of uncertainty out of the picture.
It's time to face the fact that commercial ISPs have outlived their usefulness in their current form.
The right to stop service
If ISPs are worried about not being able to stop unprofitable service, then take profit out as a motive. Or at very lease allow sufficient competition so that if one provider finds something unprofitable, a different provide might be able to turn a buck. Municipalities should be installing and maintaining fiber for the good of their community. If the pandemic has shown one thing it's that good, fast, cheap internet service is going to be a major component of local competitiveness going forward. Want a business to locate in your area? Want to be attractive to tech workers? Better have cheap, world-class internet service.
Rules affect small ISPs, too
Again, who better to serve small communities than a small community. If they need monetary help to maintain the physical infrastructure, well, we've already got taxes aimed directly at that problem. Get the incumbents and their profits out of the way and you'll have more money for small municipal ISPs.
Pole attachment rates
IF this is an actual problem, who better to negotiate with the pole owners than the regulators of the pole owners? Municipalities carry a lot more weight here than ISPs.
Tariffs
Municipalities are generally much more transparent about fees and tariffs than companies. They have to be, they're directly answerable to taxpayers.
Uncertainty
Most of the uncertainty they bitch about is to their bottom line. I'd argue that a municipality providing the physical infrastructure to all ISPs that want to compete would actually take a huge amount of uncertainty out of the picture.
It's time to face the fact that commercial ISPs have outlived their usefulness in their current form.
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AmanoJyaku
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
I think I can sum this up as follows:
"All companies hate regulation because of the fear of increased costs/lowered profits...
Unless that regulation explicitly lowers costs, usually through subsidies and/or tax breaks."
ISPs just take this thinking to the next level. It's not enough that they have monopolies on necessary services and can pretty much set their own prices, essentially guaranteeing profit. No, they must take every penny, and regulation gets in the way of that.
If someone put a map of children's piggy banks online, ISP executives be responsible for most of the thefts.
"All companies hate regulation because of the fear of increased costs/lowered profits...
Unless that regulation explicitly lowers costs, usually through subsidies and/or tax breaks."
ISPs just take this thinking to the next level. It's not enough that they have monopolies on necessary services and can pretty much set their own prices, essentially guaranteeing profit. No, they must take every penny, and regulation gets in the way of that.
If someone put a map of children's piggy banks online, ISP executives be responsible for most of the thefts.
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Remember when Tom Wheeler was going to usher in a new era of Net Neutrality and internet freedoms?
Good times.
Also
Pepperidge Farms remembers.
Good times.
Also
Pepperidge Farms remembers.
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There are more than two options. I live in a very rural county (pop density of 38 people/sq. mile), and we have county-wife gigabit fiber run by a non-profit CO-OP. Our county government doesn't have the experience, nor the desire to run an ISP, so they worked with the CO-OP, provided grants and the like. All the poles are owned by our power company, who is also a CO-OP. All the books are open. They have been slow getting everyone connected, but they are going forward. I'll have fiber this fall, despite living 1/2 mile my nearest neighbor.
With the flipping of parties back and forth, I trust this ISP to stick with it more than I would trust our local government, at least for now.
I currently have 3mbit DSL vis Frontier.
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At least for physical infrastructure, competition is dead in the US. Google tried to install fiber and failed, miserably. They simply couldn't afford all the roadblocks the incumbents set up. Starlink will be a solution in rural areas, but will be seriously bandwidth constrained in urban areas.
I suppose we could go the route of infrastructure as a heavily regulated utility, but the incumbents have been able to stop that as well. At this point nuking them from orbit could be the only way forward in the US.
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I always found it ironic and somewhat baffling that the USA, a country that firmly believes in free market forces and capitalism, would allow a completely monopolistic and anti-competitive cabal to capture a vital market such as telecommunications, then manage it like the Mafia manages influence turfs.
Meanwhile, otherwise socialist Europe has broken down old monopolies and enjoyed growth and innovation, with former communist countries in the East leading the world in speed and Internet quality (how does fiber to the home and 1Gbit for €9/month sound?)...
Of course, part of the US issue was its own success -- as the Internet started there, it would naturally be more expensive to upgrade old infrastructure compared to the brand new installations elsewhere; but that only goes so far to explain the current status, the rest is all corruption. What's happening with the large carriers is a disgrace and antithetical to everything the US stands for, people need to fight for local loop unbundling and their right to set up their own municipal and rural broadband outside the mafia's control to bring down the monopolies.
Either that, or we wait for StarLink, I guess?...
Meanwhile, otherwise socialist Europe has broken down old monopolies and enjoyed growth and innovation, with former communist countries in the East leading the world in speed and Internet quality (how does fiber to the home and 1Gbit for €9/month sound?)...
Of course, part of the US issue was its own success -- as the Internet started there, it would naturally be more expensive to upgrade old infrastructure compared to the brand new installations elsewhere; but that only goes so far to explain the current status, the rest is all corruption. What's happening with the large carriers is a disgrace and antithetical to everything the US stands for, people need to fight for local loop unbundling and their right to set up their own municipal and rural broadband outside the mafia's control to bring down the monopolies.
Either that, or we wait for StarLink, I guess?...
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The physically infrastructure usually is a monopoly (at least in the UK). Nobody wants to have to dig up phone lines to their homes every time they switch supplier. It's simpler and cheaper for everyone to allow companies to simply put their own hardware in the telephone exchange and reuse the existing infrastructure.
Virgin Broadband is a notable exception. They do run their own cables.
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Then investigate what made them fail and fix the issue. I bet you it was permitting + laws that allow incumbent telcos to effectively prevent buildup of competing networks by allowing suing too easily.
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As long as Americans selfishness and hatred of one another is exploitable by (mostly Republican) politicians and their allies the corporations, through keeping them sick, sad, and stupid (see rising education costs, lower scores in schools across the country, insanely expensive health care, a constant assault of Trumpian philosophy pumped through the bottom feeders and worthless shit like Twitter/Facebook), real progress will remain a pipe dream.
The internet is an enormously valuable tool for keeping America competitive both in knowledge and technology but in democracy and societal progress. The wasted opportunity is colossal, squandered like so many other things to keep power and wealth concentrated in the hands of a few. This is an obvious, to the non-brainwashed, unsustainable path that is slowly cooking and ultimately killing the Golden goose.
But ignoring history is part of the end-stage lifecycle of empires.
The internet is an enormously valuable tool for keeping America competitive both in knowledge and technology but in democracy and societal progress. The wasted opportunity is colossal, squandered like so many other things to keep power and wealth concentrated in the hands of a few. This is an obvious, to the non-brainwashed, unsustainable path that is slowly cooking and ultimately killing the Golden goose.
But ignoring history is part of the end-stage lifecycle of empires.
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AmanoJyaku
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
It should bother you, because it's a way for a company to make money off of other businesses' clients. Those clients, faced with increased costs, will push those costs off to their own customers.
In this scenario, the "company" is Comcast, the "other businesses" are Level 3 and Cogent, the "client" is Netflix, and the "customer" is you. Comcast has a contract with you, not Netflix, and that contract says nothing about the sites you visit.
Netflix pays for internet access through it's own providers, which would be Level 3 and Cogent. So, no, it's not free to Netflix. In turn, Level 3 and Cogent negotiate agreements with other providers like Comcast.
In the original provider model, Comcast's network is useless without 3rd party content networks. Why would I buy Internet access if there is nothing for me to see? But, providers have changed the game by becoming content networks of their own. Where it was once unthinkable to get Internet without access to sites like Netflix, it's totally doable today when Comcast has it's own competing content.
In other words, you're supporting anti-consumer, anti-competitive practices.
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Separate the "last mile" from the rest of it. Sort of like how electricity is dealt with where I live, transmission and generation are managed separately; there is a single regulated company that handles the transmission, and an array of companies you buy your generated electricity from. If you want to find the cheapest company, good on you. If you want to find renewable generated electricity, you can do that (the good new is that these two are continuing to converge).
This approach has some advantages:
1. You don't have any number of companies digging streets up or negotiating over post space. There is one set of electrical lines running to my house, as opposed to fiber, cable coax and copper. Digging up infrastructure costs money and time.
2. People choose to go to neighborhoods because of good schools, roads, etc. Internet connectivity can be part of that selection criteria. You can choose to live somewhere that has fiber to every home, with well-maintained switching gear; and pay the fees/taxes that go with it. You choose to live somewhere that invests in none of this, and use wireless.
3. If you live out in a rural area, get the best wireless/satellite you can. It might be expensive, but at least you are not subsidizing somebody else's fiber that they may or may not be using. If you are in a densely populated urban area, and the the 5G stuff ends up working as well as claimed, use that.
4. Now you can have multiple ISPs. Maybe you value privacy and will pay for an ISP that commits to not sniffing traffic, messing with DNS, etc. to snoop on you. Maybe you don't care and want to save money, or really like all the "value add" that some ISPs provide (manipulated DNS, junkware, etc.), go that route. ISPs can compete on cost, privacy and performance. Like back in the stone ages; people could choose AOL or Earthlink or somebody else; it wasn't perfect, but at least there was a choice. Now, you're usually lucky if you can choose between Giant Douche and Crap Sandwich; along with foisting the requisite "bundling" of junk like POTS service that has diminishing value.
5. State and Federal subsidies will inevitably have to go to areas with economic or infrastructure challenges, but that's the case even today. With Last Mile being meaningfully regulated, hopefully there will be more transparency in the process.
Where I live we have Frontier (previously Verizon) and Spectrum servicing our area. Frontier is dying a well-deserved death, and it would be a great opportunity to allow the city or county to buy up their infrastructure and update it. It would cost money, it would cost me money, but I have much more visibility (and a small amount of "say") in how my city (and county) spend my money than Frontier Ghetto Communiations.
The bummer is that since all of this would require national coordination, the likelihood of anything like this happening is near-zero; at least while the FCC is run by a telco shill.
This approach has some advantages:
1. You don't have any number of companies digging streets up or negotiating over post space. There is one set of electrical lines running to my house, as opposed to fiber, cable coax and copper. Digging up infrastructure costs money and time.
2. People choose to go to neighborhoods because of good schools, roads, etc. Internet connectivity can be part of that selection criteria. You can choose to live somewhere that has fiber to every home, with well-maintained switching gear; and pay the fees/taxes that go with it. You choose to live somewhere that invests in none of this, and use wireless.
3. If you live out in a rural area, get the best wireless/satellite you can. It might be expensive, but at least you are not subsidizing somebody else's fiber that they may or may not be using. If you are in a densely populated urban area, and the the 5G stuff ends up working as well as claimed, use that.
4. Now you can have multiple ISPs. Maybe you value privacy and will pay for an ISP that commits to not sniffing traffic, messing with DNS, etc. to snoop on you. Maybe you don't care and want to save money, or really like all the "value add" that some ISPs provide (manipulated DNS, junkware, etc.), go that route. ISPs can compete on cost, privacy and performance. Like back in the stone ages; people could choose AOL or Earthlink or somebody else; it wasn't perfect, but at least there was a choice. Now, you're usually lucky if you can choose between Giant Douche and Crap Sandwich; along with foisting the requisite "bundling" of junk like POTS service that has diminishing value.
5. State and Federal subsidies will inevitably have to go to areas with economic or infrastructure challenges, but that's the case even today. With Last Mile being meaningfully regulated, hopefully there will be more transparency in the process.
Where I live we have Frontier (previously Verizon) and Spectrum servicing our area. Frontier is dying a well-deserved death, and it would be a great opportunity to allow the city or county to buy up their infrastructure and update it. It would cost money, it would cost me money, but I have much more visibility (and a small amount of "say") in how my city (and county) spend my money than Frontier Ghetto Communiations.
The bummer is that since all of this would require national coordination, the likelihood of anything like this happening is near-zero; at least while the FCC is run by a telco shill.
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Vote no to ISP's funded by local taxes! Vote yes to annex all last mile as a utility!
Local, singular, last mile network, regulated, non-profit, co-op.
-free access to .gov sites
-pay wall access to global ISP providers
-last mile remains neutral
-last mile remains regulated
-last mile guaranteed coverage and speed
-last mile funded 100% by subscribers
Local, singular, last mile network, regulated, non-profit, co-op.
-free access to .gov sites
-pay wall access to global ISP providers
-last mile remains neutral
-last mile remains regulated
-last mile guaranteed coverage and speed
-last mile funded 100% by subscribers
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It's not so much "allow," as deluded ourselves that last mile "local loop" competition was practical, or even desirable, and pretended that DSL was a competitor to coax for far longer than it actually was in most places in the US. It's like suggesting that there should be two sets of water pipes going to every house, or two competing electricity utilities, or most tellingly in regards to Title II, that it'd make sense to have multiple telephone wires running to every house.
My understanding of Europe is limited, but at least in the UK, there's still a single monopoly for the actual cable going to everyone's home, but they instead allowed competition over who gets to deliver service over that cable, aka local loop unbundling:
https://meincmagazine.com/tech-policy/201 ... mpetition/
This allows competition in services and prices on that cable. The server of the underlying cable still needs to be regulated though.
In the US, allowing other companies to deliver service over one company's cable is, ironically, seen as socialist and anti-competitive. For true competition, they think, each company needs to supply its own cable, to every house. Which is horribly impractical, and as Google Fiber and Verizon FiOS discovered, not likely to get you enough subscribers to be profitable, for as soon as the competitor runs their cable, the incumbent raises speeds and drops rates to retain customers.
So it's the more socialist thinking of Europe that allowed them to realize that the cable to the home is a public utility, which ironically allowed them to implement competition over it, while the US's more militant emphasis on full competition down to the cables, instead of "forcing" a company to share its cable, means there's a lot of areas where there's really only one ISP that can deliver modern broadband speeds to a particular household.
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That sounds like a "perfect is the enemy of good" situation.
Yes, ideally, grabbing the existing infrastructure for the public good sounds nice. However, it's never going to happen. Municipal ISPs at least get individual localities closer to the "internet as a utility" ideal without decades of fighting the incumbent companies over "their" property.
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That is true. But with plenty of caveats.
In Europe you'll find a diversity of situations, eg
(1) Privately owned infrastructure, full stop.
(2) Public owned infrastructure (DSL/fibre) being leased to private operators.
(3) Previously public owned infrastructure (DSL) subject to unbundling regulations.
(4) Privately owned infrastructure (DSL/fibre mainly) subject to unbundling regulations.
(5) Privately owned infrastructure (conduits/poles) subject to shared access regulations.
(6) Public (municipal) providers.
The first thing to notice is that there isn't a one size fits all.
The second is that when you look under the hood there's a lot of public money at play even if the ISPs are private.
Practical example: my country is on route to be have 90% of home passed with FTTH by the end of the year if COVID-19 doesn't mess too much with it. And most of the fibre is privately owned. But
(a) there's more than a decade of shared access regulations and "dig once" policies at play which has brought down the costs of laying down fibre to under 300€ per home passed.
(b) in more rural areas of the country this didn't work so the Government basically contracted companies to build and maintain a dark fibre network which is then leased by the ISPs.
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We in America have the freedom to do whatever we want but as of late that's also been our biggest downfall.
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An Honest casual Conversation between ISPs and Consumers.
ISPS: We will be forced to Raise prices if Title 2 in Enacted!
Customers: Don't you raise prices anyway?
ISPs: Umm..... We will raise it more!
Customers: Why?
ISPs: Lack of Profits! Means Less Investment!
Customers: Doesn't the Federal Government Give you money for Investments when you become a Title 2? Which would Offset the costs of decreased profits from Consumers?
ISPs: Umm.....
Customers: How about you allow Municipal Broadband to compete?
ISPs: Then we would have to actually use competitive prices and not have exorbitant profit margins... i mean umm.....
Customers: Soo... you want a monopoly and charge insane prices because of lack of competition?
ISPs: Yes! Why is that So hard?!?
ISPS: We will be forced to Raise prices if Title 2 in Enacted!
Customers: Don't you raise prices anyway?
ISPs: Umm..... We will raise it more!
Customers: Why?
ISPs: Lack of Profits! Means Less Investment!
Customers: Doesn't the Federal Government Give you money for Investments when you become a Title 2? Which would Offset the costs of decreased profits from Consumers?
ISPs: Umm.....
Customers: How about you allow Municipal Broadband to compete?
ISPs: Then we would have to actually use competitive prices and not have exorbitant profit margins... i mean umm.....
Customers: Soo... you want a monopoly and charge insane prices because of lack of competition?
ISPs: Yes! Why is that So hard?!?
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I feel like “Internet as a Utility” is a logical end state. I agree that the pandemic has reinforced the crucial role that access to reliable internet plays in everyday life. It has become a necessity.
I wonder how this would look on a state by state basis. For example, power distribution and access vary even at the county or city level. A good example of this is comparing Houston vs Austin.
I wonder how this would look on a state by state basis. For example, power distribution and access vary even at the county or city level. A good example of this is comparing Houston vs Austin.
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You're talking about literally decades worth of legislating. With no guarantee that the incumbents won't just use their cash hordes to derail that process as well. This has been tried in the past and ISPs actually have a very good track record of spending money on the right things to prevent changes from happening.
So if we're going to get into a legislative donnybrook, I'd rather the end goal be something that is much more likely to achieve the goal of internet service as a utility.
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When these articles come up I always feel the need to point out that Canada did precisely this over a decade ago.
I now get my service from a small ISP known as Start (I highly recommend them) who access my home over Rogers Cable wiring, which is now a common carrier.
The internet in Canada did not collapse. All it did was get cheaper, faster and better.
I now get my service from a small ISP known as Start (I highly recommend them) who access my home over Rogers Cable wiring, which is now a common carrier.
The internet in Canada did not collapse. All it did was get cheaper, faster and better.
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1) The marketplace isn't competitive because it can't be. Physical infrastructure is monstrously expensive to put in. There's a reason why we don't have competition for infrastructure like water, sewer, electricity, roads. It's too damn expensive and disruptive to have actual competition at that level.
2) The urban US is just as dense as anyplace else on the planet and that's where roughly 80% of Americans live. Yeah, rural service will be a problem and that can be solved exactly like rural telephone and rural electrification were.
And it's funny, you seem to completely discount the places where internet service HAS been treated like a utility and it does just fine. But don't let your ideology get in the way or anything.
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Well done, was coming here to do the same thing :clap:
Piece previously ran on site in Dec. 2014 (so hence the fresh comment thread after all these years): viewtopic.php?p=28151015
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There isn't LLU in the US, which is why paid prioritization is a real concern, and has arguable already happened.
It sounds like you don't understand how the internet originally worked, and how it's supposed to work.
Originally, end user ISPs, Tier 3, would connect up customers to their network, and then connect to one or more Tier 1 providers for "transit," i.e connection to the internet. Both ends of the connection paid into Tier 1, but that worked because there's multiple Tier 1 providers that compete. A Tier 3 can easily switch Tier 1 provider without otherwise affecting their network, so the competition lead to transit costs exponentially decreasing over time.
For a Tier 3 local ISP though, this meant that every bit of "internet" traffic was transit that they paid for. In this scenario, free peering with Netflix actually saves money for the local ISP, since it's no longer internet traffic they have to pay transit for. This is how all local ISPs were initially, and how many smaller ISPs still are. Many small ISPs like free peering, because it saves them transit costs.
Then Comcast barges in and fucks everything up. Comcast has gotten so big it's network is basically an "alternate internet," in that they can run traffic cross country without ever it ever touching a true Tier 1 network. So they started demanding free peering with Tier 1 networks, which normally only ever free peer with other Tier 1 networks in a way to optimize traffic over the whole internet. Comcast doesn't have access to the whole internet, but they have something they can hold hostage: their customers. If a Tier 1 can't deliver to a Tier 3 as big as Comcast, they're unable to deliver to a significant portion of the end users of the internet, and so are less appealing to other Tier 3 ISPs as a potential transit provider. So many Tier 1s capitulated and started free peering.
Except soon free peering wasn't enough for Comcast. Now they wanted transit providers (who normally charge end-user Tier 3 ISPs for delivering taffic to them) to pay them for the "privilege" of delivering to Comcast customers, even though the Comcast customers explicitly paid Comcast for access to the entire internet, including whatever transit is necessary to get what they requested. Comcast claims that this is because the free peering they bullied the Tier 1s into providing isn't "symmetric," like most Tier 1 agreements between actual peers are. But that's because those connections shouldn't even be free peering, they should be transit intended for an end user. And since Comcast's network is primarily residential end users, with asymmetric DOCSIS, the traffic is heavily weighted towards download over upload, Comcast's network is, by design, going to pull in more traffic than it pushes out.
You basically bought the lie that Comcast pushed, because it had already changed the rules of the game in its favor, and flipped the narrative of their unfair practices to make the companies complaining seem unreasonable.
https://meincmagazine.com/information-tec ... ackbone/2/
https://meincmagazine.com/tech-policy/201 ... nt-claims/
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This is wrong.
Decades ago the US ran copper wires for phones to virtually every nook and cranny of the country. And after decades of good service I don't see anyone claiming it wasn't cost effective.
(And AFAIK most of that copper was laid down at the taxpayers expense.)
Running fibre will cost an equivalent amount of money.
And it will provide decades of good service. My educated guess is that we'll hit 10-100 Tbit/ per fibre before it makes sense to replace the fibres being deployed.
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Local phone companies were always regulated as a common carrier without ever being annexed.
There's some places with Electricity provided by a private company that's just heavily regulated. ConEd is one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolidated_Edison
Saying ISPs should be treated like a utility doesn't necessarily mean they should be annexed as government property.
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Electricity here is private, though it's a non-profit.
They don't produce electricity other than a solar farm. They handle the distribution, maintenance, billing, infrastructure, etc.
I don't have any municipal utilities or services other than police and fire.
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You pay your ISP to connect you to the Internet so you can access Google, Netflix, whatever you desire.
Netflix pays their ISP to connect them to the Internet so they can sell you their service.
Under normal circumstances it would be in the best interest of both your ISP and Netflix's ISP to strike a deal to have a good connection between them.
And typically this deal is that each supports their side of the costs of improving their connection to each other without money really changing hands.
Instead because you are a hostage to your ISP, your ISP thinks they can get away with charging Netflix or Netflix's ISP money on top of the money you're already paying.
If there was real competition your ISP would never be able to pull that off.
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Your current ISP likely already takes plenty of tax money. The FCC is giving away $16 billion for rural expansion:
https://meincmagazine.com/tech-policy/202 ... expansion/
That ISP then gets to keep all the profits from this expansion. That is, if they don't end up taking the money and not doing the promised expansion, but keep the money anyway.
https://meincmagazine.com/tech-policy/201 ... bligation/
Or take massive tax breaks:
https://meincmagazine.com/tech-policy/201 ... y-it-back/
We, in the US, have already socialized broadband. It's just that we're subsidizing companies so that they can profit off of it, instead of directly benefiting the citizen. You're already paying taxes to fund ISPs, whether or not you use them. Wouldn't you rather be paying towards an ISP who's main goal is serving you, instead of maximizing profits?
Additionally, it's like arguing against public schools when you don't have any kids: just because you're not utilizing it directly doesn't mean its not benefiting your community and improving it overall, benefiting you as well.
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Right, Netflix can easily change providers, and has in the past. You, however, don't have as many options. And because you're basically captive to your ISP, you're a much stronger bargaining chip than Netflix is for its ISPs. If you start getting slow traffic from Netflix, all you can do is grumble a bit. If Netflix starts seeing slow traffic from its ISP, it can jump ship. So ISPs like Comcast can degrade service and play chicken to see who loses their customers first, because it's not going to be Comcast.
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