This is a great example of how regulation can actually nurture innovation. During the whole net neutrality debate there was much FUD about how it would hamper business and discourage investment in networks. Yet here we have business and investment continuing and the customer continuing to get improved services.
When Comcast is pushing for-pay IP-based services and then clamps down on all the others by implementing caps on their data, that is anti-competitive.
Comcast's internal, fully-laden cost for a gigabyte of data delivered to your home is on the order of a few pennies. Charging several hundred thousand percent for overage is beyond anti-competitive and well into the extremely damaging.
I think in this case it's a question of why there isn't more competition. Clearly if Comcast's charges are unreasonable or capped at an unreasonably low amount it should in theory be corrected in a marketplace where customers can flee to a competitor who isn't fleecing them. Except obviously they can't where Comcast enjoys a monopoly, is fixing prices with other competitors or prices are set externally by a "regulator" unanswerable to consumer groups.
I don't think framing this as a net neutrality issue will get you very far - it's clearly monopolistic behaviour and you should be writing the DOJ looking for antitrust proceedings ...
Comcast will be getting charged to peer with other network operators, this new service does reflect the costs that Comcast will incur. The answer might be for Netflix to install their own CDN hardware at Comcast data centres.
Another company using the same business model is BT in the UK, they have their own sports channels that don't count towards your usage limits.
