But what does charging for fast delivery look like? I get the distinct impression that people think the ISPs plan to throttle any site that doesn't pay up; whic

But what does charging for fast delivery look like? I get the distinct impression that people think the ISPs plan to throttle any site that doesn't pay up; which is a gross mischaracterization of the situation. Part of the beef with Netflix is that Netflix is building a business model that disproportionately taxes the infrastructure with long-form video content. You have one service that accounts for 30-50% of bandwidth usage. That level of traffic causes havoc on transit providers, ISPs, etc. From an engineering perspective, it's better to establish direct routes because you're removing bottlenecks. Your last statement doesn't really help your argument since the situations you describe actually happen. The power company can't really do the first because they don't have the visibility, but they do charge more per kWh for residential power, since residential peak usage occurs in the evening. In many areas toll roads and bridges are more expensive if you don't have an EZ Pass (the EZ Pass basically flags you as a resident).