ByronM - 3:50 am on Sep 20, 2009 (gmt 0)

I personally don't buy the bandwidth issue.. selling 50mbit lines for 69/month isn't the issue, its when you have cable companies who want to protect their lucrative content industry and make it prohibitive to others to deliver over the internet that we have to worry about. In fact in many ways the Internet is probably one of THE best "Economy of scale" industries ever since the more you use, the cheaper it gets and the larger the network you support the more the carriers want to peer with you anyway.

Your talking $10.00/mb for GigE connections in most metropolitan areas for a Tier 1 network. 10gE is running 4.00/mb for wholesale.

Personally if companies go metered internet access i think they would risk failing more since most people don't use a fraction of their bandwidth and those who do use a lot of bandwidth would happily switch companies that don't meter.