The wholesale price of bandwidth is so low, I can't really understand this as anything other than BOFH-esqe behavior by the network planners, but maybe there is some path to a poorly executed attempt to eventually shakedown customers. Beyond the transit fees, its hard to imagine them struggling to backhaul with modern fiber optic data rates and the cable industry has always been a leader in fiber backhaul. Beyond all that, the protocols will almost certainly do the right thing.<p>Further, having a ton of eyeballs pulling downstream gives Cox a ton of leverage in negotiating settlement-free peering that for instance a pure wholesale carrier would not have. Cox is also a carrier, so the eyeballs are valuable beyond just their subscription fees.