Maybe I was wrong about the bandwidth in fiber optics, but yes, it's a problem mainly in cities, but metered internet would go against net neutrality. The problem with limits, although it would solve the worries of the internet being overcrowded is that innovation will be hindered. Like I previously mentioned, limits would only prevent people from streaming video, using VoIP, downloading legit movies, software updates (although not much, some can take a chunk of bandwidth), etc and they would have to worry about overages. From what we seen with Time Warner charging outrageous prices (like $150 dollars for unlimited internet and lower pricing levels with small caps and expensive overages per GB, like $2 per GB), people, especially in the US don't want metered internet and there is no way of telling how much you use unless you use a program that tells you or have your router track the usage, neither average Joe would know how to set up. Metered internet will only cause more outrage and frustration, while the companies rake in the money from all those overages.
Here are the plans that Time Warner originally wanted to set in some areas, but didn't with the outrage:
Quote:
• We are increasing the bandwidth tier sizes included in all existing packages in the trial markets to 10, 20, 40 and 60 GB for Road Runner Lite, Basic, Standard and Turbo packages, respectively. Package prices will remain the same. Overage charges will be $1 per GB per month.
• We will introduce a 100 GB Road Runner Turbo package for $75 per month (offering speeds of 10 MB/1 MB). Overage charges will be $1 per GB per month.
• Overage charges will be capped at $75 per month. That means that for $150 per month customers could have virtually unlimited usage at Turbo speeds.
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SeijiSensei: If pricing for metered internet are fair with a fair cap, it would probably work, since from data collected from my router, I only use around 70 GB per month.
The problem is, metered internet will only bring the internet back to the stone age. Every time you load a page, ads load up which takes bandwidth. Blogs which uses a lot of images or Flash content would have to pull back to just text on a page. Metered internet will also hurt content providers like iTunes, hulu, Netflix and others the most since most of their services require a sizable amount of bandwidth. I'm not saying the concept of metered internet would hurt a average joe or people who don't use alot of bandwidth, but the flaw is, if metered internet were to be applied to all broadband, most people would just go back to dialup instead of deal with metered internet since we know that most companies will price gouge on overages to maximize profits. Metered internet looks good on paper, but in practice, it's not going to work in my opinion and just make the internet more restricted.