[How the Content Distributors split these fees among themselves (for example peering vs. transit) should have no conceptual bearing on the economics of content distribution costs between Provider and Consumer. In other worlds, leave the IAPs out of this debate of who pays for the content distribution. Treat this as a cost of doing business and pay the IAP]
You are forgetting your first rule, follow the money. As long as IAPs have money, they won't be left out of the debate. FoxSports-Midwest recently announced they were going to start charging cable companies 8 cents per subscriber to carry NHL hockey games. TCI balked, and was going to drop FoxSports. FoxSports ran a crawl-line across the bottom of the last NHL hockey game saying TCI customers would no longer be able to watch NHL hockey. What do you think the final outcome was? Did TCI end up paying FoxSports, or did FoxSports end up paying TCI? Things get more interesting when content is available via one IAP, and not available (or greatly degraded) through another IAP in the same market. If IAPs abandon the current universal connectivity model for the Internet, expect a huge bidding war for content to break out. Universal connectivity was the one advantage the Internet had over private online services. It also let IAPs avoid paying content producers. -- Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO Affiliation given for identification not representation