In this case, what matters is that one company is already taking my money for a particular service, half-assing the service itself, taking those profits, and trying to blame someone else.
I see that ISPs (companies) generally want to make more money. Attempting to charge Netflix is an attempt at that. If they are not able to charge Netflix this extra amount, wouldn't it be logical for them to charge consumers more?
As it appears in Netflix's statement, their network is congested. If ISPs want to keep their profit ratio and offer better services to their consumers. Somebody has to pay more. I doubt they would settle for anything less.
Again this is just me. I would be interested to hear if there would be anything preventing ISPs from charging their customers more...
Netflix has offered to build a new offramp for Netflix traffic that goes directly into Verizon's network. Netflix is willing to shoulder ALL of the burden of this infrastructure cost, and to maintain it.
Verizon has refused the offer, and instead wants to charge Netflix a toll so that their traffic gets to use an EZ-Pass lane, instead of going through the normal slow toll booths that everyone else's traffic goes through.
Public backlash? Large ISPs are losing subscribers on their normally profitable video and voice packages. Most have a monopoly or duopoly on the data packages, but raising prices will bring more attention to their monopolistic ways, attention they will have to buy off with more and more bribes and lobbying which would also offset any profits.
Since they can't recover profits because of complaining customers and they can't lower profits because of complaining share holders they need to find alternative sources of revenue.