ergophobe - 5:48 pm on Feb 1, 2011 (gmt 0)

Wheel - you say the govt isn't mandating those plans, because the "company" that has been allowed to charge by usage is actually a government monopoly? Is that the deal?

But in principle...

I'd love to fly first class for the price of economy

Well, I'm pretty mad about that one too. I'm also mad about being billed by usage on my propane, electricity, phone, water, sewer, trash disposal and roads (indirectly out of my gas taxes).

Okay, so I'm not actually mad about any of those things. I'm a low end consumer of all of them, so the pay per usage actually saves me a ton of money and overall what bothers me is services that are NOT metered on a pay per use fee.

Look at the electrical grid in the US - it is crumbling because there is not an adequate profit model for people who provide transmission. All the profit is in generation and delivery. As a result, our power grid is creaking and there's no money to upgrade it.

If the US is ever going to see the kind of internet connectivity that you see in developed nations (ahem), we need to fund the transmission system adequately and get big users to pay proportionately. So I wouldn't be surprised to see the Canadian model rolled out in the US.

BTW, my home internet in the US is capped at 7.5GB/month down and 2.5GB up. I usually don't come close to using it up.