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Originally Posted by ianathuth
The main point that most people are tending to forget is the cost of broadband services. Yes, there is a lot that you can do with broadband that may be a problem with having a cap. The question you should be asking yourself is "am I prepared to pay a realistic amount for the service level of broadband that I require". Some customers expect the equivalent of a leased line service at a budget price which can never happen.
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Leased lines are expensive for many reasons. You get a business level service, with guaruntees about reliability and bandwidth. You expect the email servers to be working, for example. Also, leased lines tend to be higher speed than comsumer broadband. In effect they are subsidising the technology until it drops in price enough for consumers. Leased lines have better contention ratios too.
Many ADSL providers seem to be able to supply an unlimited service and make a profit. NTL service is nowhere near a lased line, but to be honest I'd be happy to have a "bare bones" connection without email and news servers if it was unlimited. They are useless anyway, I have Gmail and ClaraNews. How's that for a trade?
One other problem with the cap that no-one has mentioned is DOS attacks. My IP hasn't changed for months. If someone wanted to DOS me, they could flood my downstream overnight. By doing that for a few hours a night (when I wouldn't notice) they could easily run me over the 30GB limit in a few days.