ISPs need to pay for backbone bandwidth of the amount their customers consume. This is something that most consumers do not understand. In fact your consumer facing ISP or division of an ISP is just a company/division that engineers, maintains and links your home to and maintains a link to a backbone network like Level3, AT&T, Verizon Business, NTT, etc. But what I donâ(TM)t agree with Brett is that itâ(TM)s VERY Cheap especially in an urban area and a mega corporation like Time Warner can definitely afford the 10Gb level interconnects to get costs as low as 2-10cents/GB on backbone providers like Level3 in bulk. It makes it even cheaper for companies like AT&T & Verizon since they own their own backbone networks (they just hand it off to another division of the company and can get great rates due to their Tier 1 power, settlement free peering). Sure thereâ(TM)s a competition aspect per the cable companies but in the end itâ(TM)s all about cost and profit. Right now the in the US itâ(TM)s one of the most competitive markets in the world for IP transit due to the fact that we have multiple backbone providers HQâ(TM)ed in this country and competition. Now what I agree is that it needs to extend to the consumer and access networks. If companies are going to do caps, they better price is in realm of what their actual costs + profit are. Time Warner charging $1/GB is CLEARLY price gouging, in fact I see margins of that estimated at 50-80% including the access network costs. Yes the usage distribution of end users is uneven clearly and light users are subsidizing the heavy users but Time Warner is still making profits so I donâ(TM)t see why they need to start this now. Also another problem with access networks/consumer level bandwidth is that itâ(TM)s shared bandwidth and thereâ(TM)s only a limited amount of capacity on a DOCSIS 1.1 cable network before thereâ(TM)s congestion. If utilization gets high enough there needs to be node splitting (expensive, time consuming), increased bandwidth per node (DOCSIS 3.0) or shaping so everyone gets an equal amount. Itâ(TM)s only fair that way. Personally I really like Comcastâ(TM)s idea of 250GB/month since it balances costs with the current dynamic of IP transit costs. PEOPLE YOUR CONSUMER INTERNET CONNECTION IS NOT A DATACENTER CONNECTION. If you really want to know what dedicated bandwidth costs go price a T-1, DS-3, OC-X, GigE or some other kind of dedicated connection. Of course itâ(TM)s for businesses and service level gurantees but what your really paying for is unlimited dedicated bandwidth. Now personally I wouldn't mind paying a few cents for a GB but $1/GB? Your kidding me.