Re: ...
The solution is metered pricing, because like other utilities it charges people for what they use. Can you image the waste if people paid a fixed charge for water, electricity & gas regardless of consumption?
See, this is where the water & power utility analogy breaks down. Water, electricity and gas (CNG or LPG) are finite resources. The utility company has to buy that from someone else to give it to you, the more you use, the more stuff the utility company has to buy (electricity, gas, water, whatever).
Data, however, is sent through fixed "pipelines". Your ISP only pays for a fat pipe, with a fixed data rate and sometimes variable pricing on certain data rates (say, base rate covers up to 10 Mb/s, then you get charged per Mb/s extra up to the physical limit for that pipe being 30 Mb/s), but the thing is: they are paying the same as you are charged, by data rate. So it shouldn't be an issue if you're using 5%, 50% or 100% of your allocated data rate all the time because that is what the ISP sold you in the first place!!!! If ISPs want to get better data rates, they should upgrade their uplink pipes, increase pricing for home subscribers or reduce advertised speeds. The days of 50:1 contention ratios are over.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
