content: You chopped off the rest of the sentence and therefore misinterpreted what the article said. It should be read like this:  The opposition, in contrast, had been represented by  (1) small players in the industry,  (2) hardware providers like Cisco,  (3) free-market think tanks and disinterested professors, and  (4) a small group of writers and pundits who know something about freedom and free-market economics.  So the concept of small players in the industry was intended to refer to internet content companies and/or ISPs, not to hardware providers such as Cisco. Those are two of the four different categories who opposed the net neutrality rules.