We are not, in other words, 'running out of bandwidth' like we run out of oil, run out of water, or run out of diapers... it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to bill people for the data they are downloading because data is not the limited resource!... It would be saner to limit the usage of the pipeline at a particular time. Perhaps to even out the usage of bandwidth, the ISP could provide different speeds for peak and off-peak usage times. Those unhappy with the slow speeds at peak times could pay a premium for a greater share of the pipe. But wait a minute! ISPs already do this — I know that my Internet connection at home is capped at a certain speed. In fact I could get a faster speed simply by asking for it and paying a premium — no delay nor needed infrastructure upgrades. Just cash.

If people come to expect that every piece of data that goes through their network is going to cost them extra money, that may mean that all the large data that they were once downloading at home now ends up getting downloaded to the corporate network and taken home via flash drives. In addition to the spike in traffic use, there are also issues with copyright infringement liability, computer security (with flash drives from home possibly containing malware — not to mention that people will probably swap flash drives within the company, spreading infections,) and people looking for large files to download before they go home instead of doing work... To my knowledge, no company uses a method similar to "pay-as-you-go" to curb recreational traffic on their networks. They may limit speeds to certain applications, they may block sites, but I don't believe that any company institutes a bandwidth cap on its own employees.