It's worth noting that the highlighted bit has already happened once (althought it may have been Comcast). They were literally intercepting emails that were critical of them, and deleting the content, making it appear to the intended reciever that it had never existed, while simultanously making it appear to the sender that it had arrived without issue.
I was being coy when I said "a supplier" - the supplier in question was the union. (TWU at the time). As part of the contract negotiation, the company blocked the union website to all nodes on the network. That way, customers would not be able to read the union's version of events.
I should also remind forum members that I'm Canadian, so work for a Canadian carrier. The point being, though, that this was done in a country and at a time where/when it was flat out illegal - the temptation is that strong. They were willing to ask for forgiveness when they didn't have permission.
In the USA now, however, the carriers have permission. It's bad news for anybody who crosses them - supplier, customer, &c.
Here's another example... I was my employer's social media prime for a few years, back in the early days. Executives who did not understand the legalities of net neutrality figured the best way to deal with a social media complaint ("I'm going to complain about you on my blog! I have eighteen followers!") was to block the post - or even the domain if they have their own - from all customers. Somebody complains about their cellphone service on International Skeptics Forum? Bam! Block it from other customers. Write a letter to the editor of the Globe and Mail? And it got printed? Bam! Block the URL. We don't need to offer them compensation, we can just pull the plug on their threat to go public. See: problem solved.
(I'd like to say that I talked them out of it, but I was just an idealist nerd to them - it was the lawyers who helped them see the light.)
Seeing the results in the USA, the Canadian Carriers just dusted off their plans, I'm sure. This would include a multi step process:
1. identify the top traffic types
2. figure out how to further monetize them
3. build a plan to accomplish #2 without triggering backlash (start with something that affects a small number of users and is hard to defend - I'm thinking piratebay, P2P networks, 3rd party VPNs, darknet, and customers' gameservers will be the first to feel the pain, then NetFlix, network streaming, google play, apple itunes, &c, once people get used to the concept)
One of the rule in business is: "The customer pays for everything." So... what I mean by this is... when the carrier bills NetFlix for priority routing, NetFlix is not going to just absorb that as a lower profit. They will pass the charge on to their customers in turn. The carriers' new profits are coming from the customers.
