Well, here's my bet on what will happen:
3. There will be no immediate catastrophic consequences. Over time, the Internet will become less amenable to innovation and small players and will just overall be worse than it would otherwise. But there will be no sudden dramatic change that will spur action for people who weren't already concerned.
Among other things this is an issue of competitiveness for the United States.
Eventually some country or federation of countries will recognize the opportunity to grab some of the market once America becomes less startup-friendly. It may even happen in the developing world somewhere, in countries that are being mostly ignored today, taking the rest of the world by surprise.
For example excluding affiliated sites from any caps (let's stream 4k movies from Hulu, RedBox etc even if you have lower bandwidth than necessary, you would be excluded for these services) or have data caps not apply for affiliated sites.
For an extra fee you could also get similar treatment for non-affiliated sites (Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Video etc).
In the mean time everything else will gradually is getting slower and slower. Tough luck for any new startup trying to enter the market. As it already is difficult right now, it will be nearly impossible after that.
The absolutely bad things (throttling/blocking/modifying content of sites the companies don't agree with) will happen much much later.
Like how cell phones are "free" so it's impossible to buy one without a contract.
https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/verizon-kills-two-ye...
For example, will people notice the lack of a really great Netflix competitor that would have gotten off the ground? What about the new best search engine to topple Google Search that died out of the gates?
I disagree. Pai and his GOP sponsors are making enemies of people who buy bandwidth by the terabyte-second. That's much worse than making enemies with people who buy ink by the barrel, as the old saying went.
Any negative consequences to this decision, real or imagined, absolutely will come back to haunt the Republicans.
That's why I don't understand why they're doing this. They are pissing off millions of people who wouldn't otherwise bother to vote against them.
Imagine a world where more people think twice before inserting tracking and adware junk into their websites!
Edit: typo
Two possible silver linings if it does get removed on the 14th:
1. We were wrong the whole time and reversing net neutrality launches us into a golden age of fast and cheap internet for all. (Very unlikely)
2. We were right, and reversing net neutrality is as bad as we feared. While it will be painful in the short term, hopefully it's bad enough to The Internet/Net Neutrality a relevant election issue for more people.
Either way, the sure silver lining is that by hashing this out now the consequences will be fully felt by the time the next presidential election rolls around.
Can you imagine if they were trying to shove this through in the lead up to the 2020 election when everyone is distracted by all the other issues at stake in the election?