No I was not using tiered pricing. Your provider may be using flat now, but it will change. It might actually save you money. All the ISPs are trying to do is make the abusers pay for what they use and the normal users pay less. But obviously the ones that complain the most are the abusers. I'd like to see you give me one rational and legal reason why you would need to download 100+GB per month. There isn't enough time or free content to justify it, PERIOD.

Bandwidth cost money... real money. Unless your upstream provider is stupid and or sucks, you pay a fixed rate per megabit every month for a fixed amount and a per megabit for bursting over. If you think you can do it better, come up with a better model and kick their asses. And for god sakes quit whining about your CHEAP connection. Want to see expensive go to a 3rd world country. As a former ISP, and as less and less mom and pop ISPs are out there, if it could be done someone would already be doing it. Japan and other densely populated countries have a significant advantage... They don't have to run thousands of miles of fiber to reach thousands of customers... The can run a couple of miles and reach a 100,000+ customers. AND they don't have every tom, dick and harry complaining and stopping them from cutting up streets to get it there. They just do it because the government lets them. I know I used to live there.

Ohh and if someone could do it cheaper.... they would. END OF STORY.

Thank god I'm not an ISP any more. 150 bucks for unlimited 8mb down services is cheap. Let's see... If they are buying it at $10 per megabit, that is less than a 100% mark up not counting the infrastructure it rides on to get it to the NOC. That's not counting what it cost to build the network to you or what it costs to keep it running. If your a BW hog stop making others pay for your downloads. Don't want to pay higher... don't download every thing on the planet. It was always a funny balance with broadband... the only users/abusers that wanted faster connections were the ones normally downloading illegal music, movies, and porn. Now the media/content owners want to protect their content and make you pay per bit. Their going to get paid one way or the other. Why do you think they became/bought ISPs or are in bed with them? Uhhh DUH...

The ludacriousness of the subject says it all. No one caused that girl to kill herself, but herself. Sure it was an evil thing to do an karma will catchup with her, but there were obvious signs that were ignored by her parents and if anyone is at fault it is them...

As a former ISP that provided broadband in rural areas there just aren't enough users to support pricing the users see marketed at large markets, so the initial setup costs and monthly recurring charges are going to be higher in rural areas unless they are subsidized some how. Getting good bandwidth(DS3 and higher) to rural areas is also very expensive. I can buy 100mbps for ~$20/mb in a large metro, but in Qwest land a DS3 is $36 per mile and that is just for the loop. If you have to go any real distance like 100+ miles that gets expensive quickly and adds to your per megabit cost. So a full DS3 at 100 miles is $3600(+taxes etc) + IP servies. The local loop is more than 100mb in a major metro. With less population density the economics don't add up. The only way to cost effectively provide broadband in Rural markets is via wireless. Customers in rural areas do not want to pay for Wireless installations because they see the pricing marketed in larger areas for $0 installation costs. Users expect wireless to work like their telephone. Wireless has more associated problems and is very expensive to maintain. They also can't reach every customer due to line of sight issues. I have a friend that works for a rural telco that still charges like $30/mo for 128k DSL. Its because their IP connectivity costs are are over $200/mb/mo. Until good connectivity DS3 or higher can be pushed to rural areas for less than $50/mb the price of broadband in rural areas cannot come down.