Every time the topic of net neutrality comes up here, the anti-NN crowd says “all the pro-NN points are just scaremongering, there’s no evidence that any of that bad stuff about ISP favoritism would actually happen”. Well, here’s the evidence. Korea doesn’t have NN, and now Twitch is pulling out (and YouTube is halting investment, according to one sibling comment) because the ISPs gouged it to death.
Net neutrality should be mandatory and non-negotiable.
It's not transit. Transit is about taking your data across a network to some other network or networks. These are access fees aka termination fees demanded to deliver data to a networks own customers on net.
Net neutrality bans access fees as a kind of blocking and throttling.
Twitch's servers almost certainly directly connected with the three largest ISPs in Korea. And Korea has a regulation that requires them to pay those networks and it looks like the fees that were demanded were way too high. And that's what you get in an economic system where monopolists (ISPs have a terminating monopoly over there) are allowed to set prices.
Transit costs 10x what it costs elsewhere. You can't just neglect a 10x price increase when the cost sending video to users in the bulk of the expense of offering twitch in korea
Because transit is expensive due to peering fees that Korean ISPs charge? Net Neutrality rules in 2015 did govern peering (but not nearly as much as other aspects of the internet).
How does this have anything to do with net neutrality?
From what I can see, twitch is a business that benefits from the fact that most internet companies don't actually have to pay for internet connection services relative to their usage.
They're mad that forcing them to pay relative to their usage breaks their business model that relies on being subsidised by other internet usage and users, how does that have anything to do with net neutrality?
If anything wouldn't it be more in line with net neutrality to require that servicss that use more of the internet infrastructure pay for it instead of being subsidised by users of other services/sites?
Someone in Korea who wants the data twitch has, and pays their ISP for access to (among other things, twitch), can no longer access the data twitch has.
If the ISP is acting in the interests of its customers, it would make it as cheap as possible for twitch to send the data that its customers want.
If a business you are dealing with makes money some way other than by charging you for the service they provide, you're not their customer, you're their product.
Net neutrality should be mandatory and non-negotiable.