Reply #52: Welcome to the rest of the world, Americans. [View All]

Unlimited internet does not exist (without costing an arm and a leg) anywhere in the world outside the USA. The reason it existed in the US
was that until recently (before Hulu and Netflix) Americans simply didn't use that much bandwidth. 150 gigs is a huge amount - 100 movies
in high resolution. Most casual users will easily fit under 10 gig cap. In reality, unlimited business model is grossly unfair towards most regular
users who are forced to pay the same fees as the carefree bandwidth hogs clogging the net with their traffic, and most people pay to subsidize
those very few power users. When bandwidth is effectively free, as any resource, it gets wasted instead of being used most efficiently, skewing
the incentives for investing in additional infrastructure. That's one of the reasons USA is lagging all other developed countries in internet
infrastructure development. Here in Australia you can choose your cap from a series of differently priced options according to your needs.
Why is that unfair? When you exceed your cap they don't charge you extra, they simply slow your connection down to 256 kbps, still acceptable
for e-mail and some browsing, but not good for streaming. You can immediately switch to a higher cap plan and get the full speed restored.
The highest cap (before going unlimited) for Telstra customers is 200 gigs per month. I have that and never used more than 50 gigs while
doing few hours of streaming daily. I do see a problem if they plan to charge punitive fees for over usage instead of slowing down the connection.
That would be a pain to monitor one's usage constantly, and a huge moneymaker for ISPs giving them an incentive to offer smaller cap plans
and to charge exorbitant fees for extra traffic.