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Originally Posted by Fawkes
My electricity supplier doesn't care if I'm watch TV or mowing the lawn. They charge for what I use.
My water supply is unmetered, but even if it wasn't the water company wouldn't monitor if I was taking baths or showers.
I want an ISP that can provide me with a connection to the internet, whatâ₠¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s so hard about that?
If NTL needs to change its business model or pricing to remain profitable so be it. But currently I pay for a connection. That connection is capable of 10MB download and 512k upload, subject to a fair use policy of 75GB per month.
NTL need to inform me if that changes.
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Your electricity company may charge you different rates for daytime and nightime usage. This is a kind of traffic shaping designed to tempt you to move some of your consumption to offpeak hours.
Your water company may ban the use of hosepipes and other things during periods of low water reserves.
Your telephone company may charge you more for use during peak periods.
Traffic shaping goes on in many walks of life. Often this is done by differential charging which makes you think twice about when you use something.
The big problem with the internet is that some users want the fastest speeds with the lowest latency at a cheaper price than anyone else charges. This is something that no ISP can offer. As internet speeds get faster and faster something has to give. Maximum speeds will become harder to achieve. To give a reasonable level of service at a reasonable price to the majority of customers every ISP will have to take some action which will upset some of its customers. Users who expect an unlimited service with constant ability to achieve the maximum speed may get what they want for a short period of time after they have jumped ship from an ISP who cannot provide it but will soon find themselves looking elsewhere when their new ISP fails to deliver what they want.