Comment Re:no (Score 2) 479
Part of the problem in my opinion is the way they're metering it. Take my cell phone for example. I get to "choose" ahead of time how much data I think I'll need for the following month. Right now my family is able to stay under 2GB every month. I could go the next step up and choose the 4GB plan for another $10 per month, or 6 GB for an additional $20 per month. The problem is I don't know what my data usage is going to be. What if I take an unexpected trip for work and the WiFi is unreliable. What if we go on a trip and send a lot of pictures back and forth to family members. I'm faced with a couple choices. I can leave the data plan where it is, and hope we don't end up going over. If we do, I'm charged at $15 per GB for overage. Oh, it's the last day of the billing cycle, and you used 300K too much? Too bad, pay $15, and no your extra data you just paid for doesn't roll over to the next month. I could bump up my data plan to the next notch if I know I'm going out of town, but then if don't actually end up going over the usual plan, I paid extra for the privilege of *maybe* going over. Again, no refund or carry-over.
I don't have to worry about that for my electricity. It is 100% metered, and I like it that way. There are no pre-planned packages, I use what I need and I pay for what I use every month. The billing unit is small enough that I don't fret over it. If cellular and/or hardline data providers would do something similar I think they'd see a lot less resistance to implementing metered billing. I use about 300 GB in a 30 day period on my home Cable connection. I'm not a light user, but I'm not what I'd consider a high-usage user either. Most of my data usage comes from the family using Netflix for the primary video choice. If I run the math, I'm paying on average of 20 cents per GB. If my service were metered at a similar price, I wouldn't lose any sleep worrying if I used an extra few hundred megs.
Honestly I wish my cellular provider did bill in this manner but billed on a KB or MB unit. I hate worrying at the end of the month if I am going to wind up paying an extra $15 and only being able to use a small fraction of what I just paid for.