ubernoir wrote:

Some people use the Internet simply to check e-mail and look up phone numbers. Others are online all day, downloading big video and music files.

For years, both kinds of Web surfers have paid the same price for access. But now three of the country’s largest Internet service providers are threatening to clamp down on their most active subscribers by placing monthly limits on their online activity.

One of them, Time Warner Cable, began a trial of “Internet metering” in one Texas city early this month, asking customers to select a monthly plan and pay surcharges when they exceed their bandwidth limit. The idea is that people who use the network more heavily should pay more, the way they do for water, electricity, or, in many cases, cellphone minutes.

VERY good discussion of this on the Interesting People list right now. See recent posts particularly the ones with "interesting" in the subject line.

I'm surprised that consumers haven't been charged this way yet. We're already offered different speed connections, which effectively limits the amount of data you can consume. And in the data center world, I'm charged for consumption. I don't see it being a big leap... however, it would have a silencing effect on some new technologies. Would it still be cost-effective for me to stream music or to watch all of Lost and Battlestar Galactica on-line? What would it cost me to Torrent a new Slackware ISO. Those are the things that concern me.

As a stop-gap measure, at least, I think it would be smart for major ISPs to run better caches and their own torrent nodes. If at least 2 of their customers want the same thing, then they can save on the backbone bandwidth (which is really the expensive part for them). This would also benefit consumers because there would be a nearby peer to exchange with. This was kind of the Tucows download model many years ago - but the data on your WAN so you don't have to download it over and over off the Internet. Content Delivery Networks like Akamai and Limelight already do this, to an extent.

All three companies say that placing caps on broadband use will ensure fair access for all users.

The goal, says Mitch Bowling, a senior vice president at Comcast, is “ensuring that a small number of users don’t impact the experience for everyone else.”