A consumer broadband network often distributes out over a very large area and condenses into micro POPs. In the Bay Area think Pleasanton, Concord, Marin, etc. The ISP must then backhaul traffic from these micro POPs to a major POP where the whole internet interconnects (Santa Clara/San Jose).
If Netflix were to install a million terabits a second of peering and a hundred thousand caching appliances in San Jose, it wouldn't alleviate the ISPs pain point at all, which is the backhaul to the micro POPs.
Putting OpenConnect appliances into micro depolyments "out in the field" solves the problem, because it moves the content and caching out to the last mile. However the ISPs are reluctant to do this because then what used to be a half rack of telcom gear in a small shed somewhere has now become a defacto colocation facility. You have Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Vudu, YouTube, Microsoft, eBay, and two dozen others each with 4u of gear in hundreds of locations that you are paying for power and rolling out to service when they fail (because you can't let competitors have physical access to each others gear, and a node failure can saturate the uplinks from the micro POP).
The physical box is free, yes. Imagine if every website you visited wanted to put a 1u box in your living room, which you paid to keep turned on and connected to the internet. If a box failed you either needed to unrack it, haul it down to FedEx, and rerack a replacement - or let a stranger in while you aren't home.
If you don't get a box fixed fast enough, or choose not to install the MSN or Baidu box, everyone in your house starts to complain about it.
I'm not defending the ISPs here, just simply explaining their perspective. I am a huge proponent of net neutrality, and I'm currently in the process of deploying something similar to OpenConnect for another large network.
A consumer broadband network often distributes out over a very large area and condenses into micro POPs. In the Bay Area think Pleasanton, Concord, Marin, etc. The ISP must then backhaul traffic from these micro POPs to a major POP where the whole internet interconnects (Santa Clara/San Jose).
If Netflix were to install a million terabits a second of peering and a hundred thousand caching appliances in San Jose, it wouldn't alleviate the ISPs pain point at all, which is the backhaul to the micro POPs.
Putting OpenConnect appliances into micro depolyments "out in the field" solves the problem, because it moves the content and caching out to the last mile. However the ISPs are reluctant to do this because then what used to be a half rack of telcom gear in a small shed somewhere has now become a defacto colocation facility. You have Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Vudu, YouTube, Microsoft, eBay, and two dozen others each with 4u of gear in hundreds of locations that you are paying for power and rolling out to service when they fail (because you can't let competitors have physical access to each others gear, and a node failure can saturate the uplinks from the micro POP).