IMO it's coming, it's just a matter of when, you can already stream Hulu, Netflix, etc. What would they do? Ban certain connections?
It would be healthy competition, maybe the cable companies would stop charging as much as a cheap/used car payment. They already charge more for faster connections.
Put yourself in their shoes. Just like all companies, your job, bonuses, etc revolve around growing revenues, not shrinking them. So if you were them, what would you do?
Here's what I would do: quietly work with my fellow duopolist (usually Verizon or AT&T as the only alternative for broadband in areas that I serve). Yes, that kind of "cooperation" is illegal but why should the law get in our way? We then announce higher prices for faster bandwidth AND put tiers in place to generate more money from "heavier" users. As long as my "friends" over at the sole competitor join me, the end users have nowhere to turn for lower prices.
I work the pricing of bandwidth so that I protect my cash cow that is cable/satt subscriptions making it cheaper to pay (too much) for the whole cable package than to try some form of Internet-based a-la-carte.
I also put great pressure on the providers of the content to NOT make better deals with the likes of Apple, Netflix and similar to prevent any kind of future in which I have to battle with Apple, Netflix, etc on price for the same content. I get away with this because the providers need my business a lot more and this model is what they know (too).
The (us) Apple people want to cut our cable bills in half with commercial-free programming, ignoring facts like commercials generate about $50 billion per year by themselves. Again, put yourself in their shoes. The trick to getting what you want is figuring out how to make the product they provide cost us about half of what it does now while still making
more money for those doing the providing AND pumping their product through pipes controlled by the likes of Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, etc. (who will also want to increase their revenues too).
Bottom line: how do
they make more while
we pay less? That's been the problem all along. Nobody wants to take the financial hit to serve up on-demand content to the crowd wanting to pay a lot less for everything they want... especially, when the Apple, Netflix, etc subscription models are dependent on pumping
their content through cable/phone/satt pipes.
