“I wouldn’t be surprised if Cox was given a monopoly at one time.” That would explain why you are having such a hard time.
Governments create monopolies.
That's ridiculous. Governments might protect or help sustain monopolies, but monopolies can certainly come into existence without relying on governments to do so. Governments might help create some monopolies, but they certainly aren't the only origin of them.
The fact is, local cable providers do have de facto monopolies, just like power companies do.
Under such conditions, I am not impressed by the free market purists who are speaking theoretically about a situation which does not in fact exist on the ground.
As a Comcast customer, for example, I pay for a certain amount of bandwidth. Period. That applies on a monthly basis as well as an on-demand basis. There's certainly an implication there that I shouldn't expect them to selectively degrade the service from a third party (e.g. Netflix) in such as way as to destroy competition—the better to "steer" me towards purchasing Comcast's own streaming service.
As long as there is a situation where entities like Comcast possess de facto monopolies on things like wired bandwidth, it's reasonable for government to prevent them from selectively throttling services provides by third parties to customers such as myself. As I mentioned, I pay for a certain amount of bandwidth, and someone like Netflix should be able to deliver that data to me at whatever speed I'm paying for it to be delivered at. It's frankly none of Comcast's business who is sending me data, as long as I'm not breaking the law.
What if Comcast suddenly decided not to deliver FR-based data packets to my residence? Without some kind of protection, would they theoretically be able to do that—because they have a monopoly on wired broadband in my region? Should I then be forced to use an inferior bandwidth provider because of that policy?
What if all service providers—whose corporate boards are consistently run by Leftists, let's not forget—decide not to deliver any FR packets—and only FR packets? My current opinion is that such a situation should not be able to occur, even theoretically. If that means I agree with some aspects of "Net Neutrality", then I'm guilty as charged...