Quote:
Originally Posted by fredr123
It does sound kind of fair in theory. However, consider this:
Supposedly an hour long episode of a high definition television show offered by CBS, for example, could eat up to one 1 GB. Downloading a Netflix DVD-quality movie can be up to 5GB. There are a lot of services out there whose business model depends on the availability of a lot of bandwidth. Think Skype, Vonage, iTunes movies rentals, youtube, etc.
As time goes on, the things you do online are only going to use more bandwidth and there will be companies offering online services. Metering your internet use would be okay in my books iff (<-- notice the extra f) the ISPs offer reasonable caps and fair prices, just as you said. I'm afraid this could become an easy cash grab with bandwidth prices approaching the stupid rates we pay for mobile internet service from cell phone providers.
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Right, I understand that and agree with you. To futher my point on the limits, they would certainly have to be flexible as technology improves, infrastructure expands, and new services emerge on the net. Today 40GB/month is a pretty reasonable limit (that's still a download of 2 uncompressed DVD movies per week and $5 for each additional one past that). A year or two from now that may not be such a reasonable limit, and the ISPs should then raise it. The profit they've made over the last two years from the heaviest users should be able to pay for the necessary infrastructure.
I certainly hope it does not become a cash grab like mobile phone companies. In theory if one ISP raised their monthly allotments the others would have to follow to stay competitive, but when we're talking about megacorporations like most ISPs you can never really be sure that normal logic is going to apply. Of course, the alternative some ISPs have chosen to employ now in lieu of download limits is bandwidth throttling which I think is far worse.