Originally Posted by kane

ISP's likely won't charge consumers directly for "tiers" or "packages." What they will do is charge website owners. Comcast could go to Pornhub and say, "Pay us $10 million per month or we will put your site in the "slow lane" and no matter how fast an internet connection your visitors have, it will load much slower than your competitions and make streaming video a challenge." Pornhub now has no choice but to pay them or risk losing a ton of visitors who will move on to faster-running sites.

Imagine if Comcast started up its own movie or music streaming service. They could just choose to put Netflix or Spotify in a "slow lane" so Comcast customers will choose their fast service over one of the slower ones.

Of course, all of these things could piss off customers and they will switch to an ISP that doesn't do that, but roughly 30% of the country only has one choice when it comes to broadband ISPs and many others only have two. If both are throttling, then you have no real choice.