All the furor over cable companies trying to sell "premium" connectivity, and yesterday's FCC announcement that they'll allow this, ignores the fact that content providers with deep pockets have long had ways to get better connectivity to end users. They're called Content Delivery Networks, either purchased from service providers like Akamai and Limelight, or done in-house by Google and Amazon. These companies have large networks of servers distributed all around the Internet, located on most of the large ISPs and/or at connectivity points between ISPs. When users go to a site, the network automatically directs them to the closest server, to minimize latency and provide better connections.
In other words, if you wanted to provide a better quality service, you just bought more servers and connections from multiple providers. The only difference the latest decision makes is that now you have another option: pay the ISP for priority routing. The Internet has never really been a level playing field -- if you could only afford basic web hosting, you've been at a disadvantage.
So what's the big deal?