Where are these fast lanes? I believe you of course, but how do I know these exist like you say?
(Side note: one more good reason for Netflix to be in the content creation game)
Netflix gets to pay whatever rate to get priority infrastructure at the telco, you get to pay more to Netflix, and you blame Netflix (not the telco) if the content delivery is botched / not as good as what your "cable subscription over the Internet" delivery is.
That doesn't line up perfectly with the narrative about fast lanes that we were sold, but it does show some of the power being wielded by the telco today as more than just a dumb pipe, and how they leverage their position against competitors.
I'm not sure that's true. Netflix must pay a premium to the ISP to get prioritized access within the ISP in order to get their edge cache in position to compete against the ISP. That's three ways in which the ISP is not acting as a dumb pipe.
The Wikipedia understanding of network neutrality is: the principle that Internet service providers (ISPs) must treat all Internet communications equally, and not discriminate or charge differently based on user, content, website, platform, application, type of equipment, source address, destination address, or method of communication.
No, that’s not a fast lane nor would be stopped by NN. You just explained that Netflix made an investment to get CDNs where they would be effective.
So, I’m still curious to know where these priority traffic fast lanes are.
That costs the Provider significant routing and intermediate-distance (40~100km, i.e. CWDM long-range transceivers) bandwidth. This is much more expensive then feeding the google box with power.
An "internet fast lane" would be like the city government saying to Amazon, "and also, all traffic lights will immediately switch to green for amazon delivery vehicles."
No, they're still using the same roads as everyone else, they're just starting from a lot closer to the destination.