[MovedGoalPosts]

I'm not sure realistically that a company would just be able to charge based on P2P stuff, unless it is able to develop monitoring software that identified the contents of packets sent / received. As that would undoubtedly affect your privacy, ntl and others would have to make major changes to their T&Cs and AUP. As that would be a major change in contract they would have to notify us properly. Even ntl wouldnt want the outcry that would surely follow, the cap stuff was bad enough.

There might be a role for a very low user metered package, i.e. you pay a low fixed charge for your BB being always on for your email and limited browsing but if you exceed say a very low threshold of 1GB a month then the rest is paid for additional bandwidth. This would only appeal to low users perhaps on the 150k services.

Faster speed users, have the increased speed and bandwidth because they want to use it. I for one dont want to go back to the bad old days of being frightened to use my connection for fear of the bill next month. It is for the ISPs to establish the flat rate charge to meet their general costs. Market forces help to establish this price. There will always be higher and lower than average users, but until you are significantly lower than average use a metered option is not going to be what a customer wants or needs. Flat rate pricing works in so many walks of life. I fail to see why it is not approprate for Broadband.

I seem to recall seeing an ntl quote - possibly on that awfull Buy NTL channel - that "our customers like flat rate pricing" or words to that effect. Would this be another ntl change in the future for perceived short term financial gain?

We do need to be on our guard to ensure that flat rate pricing remains available and ISPs dont go down the metered route. That would stop the BB revolution in it's tracks.

To my mind moving to a metered rate is a cap by another name. I'm sure that anticap would get involved if this was anything more than a pipe dream.