A quantifiable problem exists but it was created by the ISPs and they are doing nothing to fix it...
I am going to use small numbers just to make it easier to explain:
Imagine an ISP has 100 customers, all billed for 1Mbps. That is a total of 100Mbps across all customers. The ISP would need to have in place the infrastructure to get 1Mbps from each customer to the ISP and a little over 100Mbps from the upstream provider to give every customer 1Mbps constant speed at all times (ignoring bandwidth overhead and other considerations (I am simplifying)).
The problem is the ISP's DO have the infrastructure for the 1Mbps from the customer to the ISP but NOT the infrastructure for the 100Mbps from the upstream provider.
Usage based billing is not to charge for a quantifiable commodity it is to deter people from downloading and streaming to keep their undersized trunks open. If you have a 15Mbps connection and load and email or Facebook it's not going to use much of that speed or for very long. If you are downloading a torrent or streaming a movie it is going to pin that speed for an extended time. They are trying to deter that kind of activity instead of upgrading their infrastructure to handle all of their customers.
A restaurant would not last very long if it constantly booked parties of 50 when it only had the staff to feed 25 people a full meal.... But if the restaurant over-charged for entrées and made only appetizers affordable they might be able to handle the number of people simply by making it so most people wouldn't buy an entrées. But it wouldn't be good business, good business would be to properly staff the kitchen... The ISP's don't want to properly staff the kitchen, they want to over charge people for a full meal.
Not only do I agree with shovas that the lack of any substantial competition creates a market where the base prices are already excessive (In my province for example we have a single cable provider and a single dsl provider. They do basically whatever they want.)
But, the other problem is the base caps on these already over priced packages are ridiculous...
We have a 50 Mbps package from one ISP with a 175 GB/month data transfer cap. What the heck is the point of 50Mpbs if you're limited to 175GB. Obviously you are only buying 50Mbps if you are doing things like serving content, video conferencing, connecting a large number of devices, or things of that nature. 175GB/mo is ridiculously low for such a high-speed package.
The same ISP has a "business" package that costs almost 80$/mo., has a speed of only 15Mbps, and a transfer cap of 110 GB/month. What is a business going to do with that?
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A quantifiable problem exists but it was created by the ISPs and they are doing nothing to fix it...
I am going to use small numbers just to make it easier to explain:
Imagine an ISP has 100 customers, all billed for 1Mbps. That is a total of 100Mbps across all customers. The ISP would need to have in place the infrastructure to get 1Mbps from each customer to the ISP and a little over 100Mbps from the upstream provider to give every customer 1Mbps constant speed at all times (ignoring bandwidth overhead and other considerations (I am simplifying)).
The problem is the ISP's DO have the infrastructure for the 1Mbps from the customer to the ISP but NOT the infrastructure for the 100Mbps from the upstream provider.
Usage based billing is not to charge for a quantifiable commodity it is to deter people from downloading and streaming to keep their undersized trunks open. If you have a 15Mbps connection and load and email or Facebook it's not going to use much of that speed or for very long. If you are downloading a torrent or streaming a movie it is going to pin that speed for an extended time. They are trying to deter that kind of activity instead of upgrading their infrastructure to handle all of their customers.
A restaurant would not last very long if it constantly booked parties of 50 when it only had the staff to feed 25 people a full meal.... But if the restaurant over-charged for entrées and made only appetizers affordable they might be able to handle the number of people simply by making it so most people wouldn't buy an entrées. But it wouldn't be good business, good business would be to properly staff the kitchen... The ISP's don't want to properly staff the kitchen, they want to over charge people for a full meal.
Not only do I agree with shovas that the lack of any substantial competition creates a market where the base prices are already excessive (In my province for example we have a single cable provider and a single dsl provider. They do basically whatever they want.) But, the other problem is the base caps on these already over priced packages are ridiculous... We have a 50 Mbps package from one ISP with a 175 GB/month data transfer cap. What the heck is the point of 50Mpbs if you're limited to 175GB. Obviously you are only buying 50Mbps if you are doing things like serving content, video conferencing, connecting a large number of devices, or things of that nature. 175GB/mo is ridiculously low for such a high-speed package. The same ISP has a "business" package that costs almost 80$/mo., has a speed of only 15Mbps, and a transfer cap of 110 GB/month. What is a business going to do with that?