I didn't say anything about avoiding load. They don't want to raise capital to build their own backbone - so they want to pass off the cost to the largest traffic sources (Netflix etc) and largest traffic destinations (most oactive consumers).
> How is the number of connection requests relevant to a router?!
More connection requests means more CPU usage on a router. More open connections means more RAM usage.
> Non-discriminatory is no enough, it has to be free or at cost. They are a monopoly, and as such non-discriminatory is still a monopolistic price.
Non-discriminatory means they offer all content providers the same prices. Now if you're saying that they can overcharge because there's no competition, then I agree. This is a problem in the short term. But if I understand Pai's logic, this gap in the market will spur competition (and solutions) to emerge through innovation. I'm skeptical about this logic but cautiously optimistic.
I grant you that this is not a satisfying answer when you only have one shitty ISP option like Comcast and there's no hope fore a competitor in the short term. But given the growth of fixed residential wireless and new spectrum like White Spaces it's possible that a Comcast/Verizon would be doing more damage to their own brand (and content offerings) in the long term by mistreating their customers.
I really don't understand what your point is ... how does avoding load on the internal backbone leave which costs of growing the backbone to the ISP?!
> The point about torrents and bitcoin is that these applications are particularly burdensome on routers because of the amount of connection requests as compared to a fairly manageable HTTP or RTSP session.
Uh? How is the number of connection requests relevant to a router?!
> As I mentioned above, server co-location and direct network peering is already a thing that many larger ISPs offer on a non-discriminatory basis.
Non-discriminatory is no enough, it has to be free or at cost. They are a monopoly, and as such non-discriminatory is still a monopolistic price.
> However, most new businesses will piggyback on existing cloud hosting (AWS/Google/Azure) or CDN (Akamai/Google/Cloudfront) arrangements.
Which isn't necessarily that bad, as long as there is competition among CDNs. A CDN ultimately is just a different kind of transit provider.