I have a sensible, logical plan to deal with the issue of bandwidth capping. Charge $5/month and $0.10/100kbps/day. Importantly, let the end user select the maximum available bandwidth. Model the data using a 95% average model so the highest 5 minutes of use a day don’t count towards the billing cost, which allows for sudden spikes in traffic not driving the day’s cost up. The end result of this is that the user pays the bandwidth used. People who use more, on average, will pay more for it, but it will be clear what the prices can and will be. This addresses the problem the ISPs are facing: trying to get heavy users to pay “their fair share”. So, someone who only checks their email pays a pittance for service and the guy who wants to download 50 linux ISO’s gets to pay a little more for it. Better yet, when you go on vacation, and nobody is using the connection, you only get the $5 “service fee” for the month.

Someone who uses a full 1mbps connection 24 hours a day, every day, for a month pays $35 for it, and a 2mbps connection would cost $65. That may sound like a lot, but most people aren’t running at %100 capacity all the time. Looking at my own data use patterns, I’d be able to get a 10mbps connection for about $50 a month – considering that most weekdays we don’t use the internet very much. This destroys the old model of “pay $N.NN a month to have access to a set limit of bandwidth – with no promise that the bandwidth is actually available when you need it”, and replaces it with a system that works.