Playing devil's advocate for a moment...
The established content providers (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, etc) have already invested massively in their own global fibre-optic networks in order to ensure that their content can be moved around the world at super-fast speeds. They also have multiple datacentres spread all over the globe in which they can cache data to ensure that it is always geographically close to the end-user. They don't need telcos to route their traffic—they only need them to deliver the last few hops to the consumer.
Therefore the current situation is that new entrants can only compete with these established content providers if they invest billions in building their own infrastructure (or pay a content delivery network like Akamai to essentially do it for them). The anti-neutrality argument is that, if carriers could instead be paid to prioritise traffic, such newcomers would then be able to compete with the established providers with substantially reduced capital expenditure. The barriers to entry would be significantly reduced.
THAT is the real reason that incumbent providers are pro-neutrality: sure, they also don't want to be held hostage over connection fees for the last few hops to the consumer—but that's something they would easily stomach if it weren't also for the very real competitive threats that could emerge.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
