Throttling (to the point that it degrades the quality of online video) or caps will mostly work against ISPs. Sure, netflix uses a lot of bandwidth, bo so does

Throttling (to the point that it degrades the quality of online video) or caps will mostly work against ISPs. Sure, netflix uses a lot of bandwidth, bo so does youtube, hulu, TechCrunch TV or Khan Academy. The online video is here and will only grow, so ISPs will have to get on with the program or face backlash from their users. If ISPs target netflix specifically, there will be PR disaster for them, possible anti-trust investigation from the government and a likely lawsuit. ISPs are not even a blip on the radar when it comes to selling video content so today Netflix has a clear value proposition: it's a cheap (about 10x cheaper than cable) access to a lot of online video. Netflix's strength is that it's content producer-agnostic. ISPs that are also cable providers can at best offer ability to view via internet their cable programming. Except they're not doing it, it would still be 10x more expensive, they cannot offer anything else that is not part of the cable subscription and probably they can't even offer time-shifting (without re-negotiating contracts with content providers).