Without the service provided by my ISP, I would have to pay ~$240/mo to get a 10 gbit port at the nearest exchange/peering point (seattleix), then rent part of

Without the service provided by my ISP, I would have to pay ~$240/mo to get a 10 gbit port at the nearest exchange/peering point (seattleix), then rent part of some dark fiber that goes out to near where I am ($2-10k/mo depending on details), then sell internet to 199 of my neighbors (using standard 20x oversubscription rate) at $80/gbit. Even if getting the fiber to near me cost $10k/mo and ~$1k/mo to attach my cables to all of the telephone poles in the neighborhood, it leaves me ~$5k in 'profit' (would come out as a wash after all of the other business expenses, drawing a salary and paying back initial capitial). I would make more money if I offered 100mbit plans for $60/mo and/or increased the contention ratio. For the second case, the streaming service buys transit from a Tier 1 backbone provider[0]. In order to be Tier 1 you have to have connectivity to all of the major peering points on the internet. If I wanted really nice internet (eg: for gaming), I would buy transit from one or more Tier 1 providers. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network