IIRC, Netflix offered to provide hardware to all the major ISPs that would cache Netflix content at the ISP data centers. Not a single one took them up on the offer.
They also offered to change their entire distribution model to P2P as-to keep the traffic burden inside the consumer isp's network (which effectively costs them nothing, it's ingress traffic that is the major costs).
Level3 has even offered to split the costs of upgrading the Big5 ISP's peering connections.
All options were refused.
Why wouldn't they do this anyway? How does the ISP have any say in whether or not Netflix distributes their content via P2P? Or am I misunderstanding?
But regardless, even with that offer, Comcast scoffed at it, citing Netflix would still be a "large burden" to their network. (which would be even more-so false than it currently is).