99% of Netflix bytes are largely served from Netflix's own CDN + a cadre of third party CDNs. The bytes to/from AWS isn't trivial by itself but relatively negligible compared to video traffic.
He also mentioned that in NZ miserly data caps are really not implemented any more, since people just aren't using expensive transits as much (any NZ people confirm?)
Of course you wouldn't know about any of these savings by following the pricing of internet services in Australia. And the government seems intent on making anyone who cares for even basic privacy needing to tunnel their entire connection outside Australia (not to mention content providers and their geoblock rules).
People often mistakenly associate the main cost of ISPs is BW. But it's the network equipment, the constant upgrading/replacement, an army of support (both physical and phone), and the last mile connectivity is the major costs. BW itself is a small part of the cost.
Getting both Akamai and Netflix cdn has similar issues, but are harder to qualify/get than GGC cache hardware.
Yes, all these CDN providers are providing us hardware and mostly excellent support in helping to set them up - in most cases, it's setup and forgets. But for them, it's a one time cost, but for ISPs it monthly recurring cost that we can't dump on users without losing customers, we can't charge the CDN providers, we just have to silently bear the cost and hope that in 15 years if we have enough customers, we might be profitable someday.
Everyone loves to hate ISPs, and I am sure a lot of it has some justification. But sometimes the cost and pain are real. That's why there is so little competition in this sector because it involves a huge amount of upfront and recurring investment and really long waiting time before you can hope to finally make some money. Then you have brain-dead regulations from the government (not all countries of course) and aggressive competition from well-connected existing companies with deep-pocket.
There is a reason why Google fiber doesn't roll out all over the country, because even with all their money cache and network expertise and well connection throughout the government - what a daunting task it will be for them to ever be profitable. Your Ad sales can only subsidize your last mile cost for so long.