> Nobody paid anybody for the service because it was assumed to be symmetrical: as many bits were going in one direction as in the other so any transaction fees

> Nobody paid anybody for the service because it was assumed to be symmetrical: as many bits were going in one direction as in the other so any transaction fees would be a wash. The justification for peering is not equal traffic, it's equal value - my customer wants to communicate with your customer. Regardless of the direction of traffic, the traffic is equally valuable to both of us because the traffic is the primary thing our customers are paying us for. Unless, of course, I can get you to pay me for it anyway because of some unrelated advantage such as the fact that your customers can leave you more easily than mine can leave me. Comcast and others are attempting to leverage exactly that - in many regions they have no viable competition whereas Netflix and L3 are much more replaceable in their respective markets. This is a prime example of abuse of a monopoly.