Please let me know if I'm wrong, as it's certainly possible. What the proposal allows for is that say Netflix, or Youtube, or any other content provider that would utilize a lot of bandwidth, would be allowed to purchase direct physical lines to individual large ISPs for that ISP's customers instead of sending data over the Internet backbone. The end result would be a faster connection for that provider and those end users, for ultimately less cost.
So what we're dealing with here is a content provider that adds extra bandwidth to the Internet (albeit for a specific purpose), and pays for it, for the intended purpose of saving money for all parties involved while improving the end customer experience. Can someone please tell me why this is a problem? Or am I reading it incorrectly?
I do agree that from a technical point of view, the provider is purchasing a higher tier connection from the ISP for an improvement in throughput, but this in no way impacts any other service. I can envision the standard net neutrality argument that would allow an ISP to possibly extort a content provider, although I can't imagine why they would ever want to do so, considering peering agreements favor the consumer of data. Even so, tweaking the rules to disallow the restriction of data would make more sense than forbidding a willing provider to selectively choose to improve the experience for a specific group of customers above and beyond what is currently possible through the Internet for the same cost.