I think a big part of this, in the US at least, is that ISPs are monopolies that can do whatever they want to their customers. We granted telecoms monopoly power back before deregulation became popular, and those monopolies have carried over to the internet. But since the general trend over the past 20-30 years has been to remove existing regulations and not add new ones, there are few laws on the books to protect consumers in the realm of new technology. This is, I think, often a good thing in competitive markets, but when the service providers have monopolies, deregulation may not be the greatest.
Another part of it is that cable companies/telcos already provide content for a fee that many content providers provide on the internets for free. Hence, content providers cut into their supposed bottom-line.
Content providers piggy-back on the ISPs in markets within which the ISP has already entered: one would expect the ISP, as a local monopoly, to exercise market power to force exit of the content providers.
That's precisely the catalyst. The ISPs have finally figured out that their high-profit communications and video 'features' are going to be destroyed by IP alternatives and they'll become dumb commodity pipes. So they're trying to jack up the price of bits to compensate.
As an Internet user I've never felt Net Neutrality was about the current content providers. For me it's always been about the next Google/Netflix/Youtube. i.e. The companies that can't possibly afford to strike those deals.
And Google itself has shown that it's perfectly willing to strike deals to protect its own traffic and throw everyone else under the bus along the way. (What do we really think that Verizon deal was about?) If they bought into several major ISPs, I'm not sure the situation would be much improved.
Don't forget market saturation. We are nearing the point where we are getting all of the customers we are going to get. I'm sure there are one or two broadband holdouts clinging to dial-up or just going to the public library, but largely, telcos and cablecos already have all of the customers they are going to get. In essence, the field is dead and utterly useless to investors who expect a large, fast, quick return.
