said by IPPlanMan:Cogent is no longer a relevant player. The next "Netflix" will need to deal with an ISP like Comcast or Verizon directly and pay the "going rate". That's a potentially dangerous precedent.
Not really, they will start the same as NetFlix did most likely using shared resources such as AWS at first, then scaling to their own infrastructure but still using transit providers like Level 3 and Cogent for transport with the eventual progression to more direct relationships such as NetFlix has just done. This isn't unique to NetFlix, almost any Internet content provider of sizable volume has to go through this transition.