I will be first to admit that I use an impressive amount of bandwidth from my internet service provider. Making heavy use of BitTorrent, streaming media, and live communication services is not a great deal of concern to me. I am willing to bet that I suck up the most data streams in my entire town. Does that mean I should be required to pay more than everyone else?
Maybe I should be the first to say yes, but there is no way that it will ever come from my mouth. I am not stupid, and none of my subscribers are either. We know when once you give some companies unregulated powers that they will exploit their customers. That is happening now.
Time Warner Cable, the 2nd largest cable internet provider in the U.S., has been exploring the option of tiered internet pricing schemes. Time Warner has confirmed to Reuters that the company will have bandwidth caps set at 5GB, 10GB, 20GB, and 40GB for the various plans.
I am currently measuring my bandwidth for an article that I will be writing next month on data usage, and I have already been given estimates of 100GB of transfer for the month! I am nearing 3GB of transfer for today alone. Note that this is a medium usage day. That number will go up with the remaining time. People can easily transfer well over a gigabyte in a single day.
How the hell does one respond when he/she has a notification pop up on their desktop stating that this person is out of bandwidth for the month? Pay more or don't use the internet? It is almost impossible for me to understand why people in other countries put up with it. From what I have read on user forums, ISPs in the UK have dropped tiered internet offerings because the people hated it so much.
The web is rapidly expanding with many rich media options. Faster internet speeds and streaming video services will result in heavy usage of bandwidth. Placing a cap on it hurts everyone. Why can't telecommunication and cable companies see this? I will bet that a company like Google, which needs users to surf the web for their AdSense and AdWords programs, is not too pleased with this idea either.
The irony is that ISPs would be glad to provide higher connection speeds with the hope that their users download plenty of data resulting in the payment of fees for exceeding the limit. I am not sure about most people, but if I had 10Mbps service (or higher), the temptation to download movies, streaming video, games, and music left and right would be great within.
ISPs could possibly manipulate the offered speeds in order to influence your usage. Would an ISP dare to juice up your connection nearing the end of the month in the hopes that you go over? If I put myself in charge of running an ISP, it does not sound like a bad plan. It just opens up so many ways for providers to play mind games with people. I do not like the idea one bit.
There are far more concerns with what could happen. Will overage rates be variable or fixed? It would be annoying to pay $1.00 per gigabyte one month, and then pay $1.25 per gigabyte the next month. What if someone else happens to be using my connection legally or illegally? Does this mean we will see large amounts of court cases over internet service charges?
In the future, these things are going to be on the mind of all internet users. It already feels like dealing with a mobile service provider. There are so many hidden fees and catches. The contract has so many ways of squeezing money out of their customers, and keeping them locked in. Unfortunately, this business model works in the United States. Typical consumers are, unfortunately, stupid when it comes to these things. I can only hope that the internet will spread the word of what it might become.
