The poster makes it sound like the sky is falling. OMG, if you download terrabytes of data/month on your residental account they might *gasp* charge you!
Australia has had metered plans pretty much since inception. Most are of the "XXgb then shape to 128kbps" variety. There have been companies offering unlimited, but they either go under, or oversell at a horrendous ratio.
If the cost of bandwidth, as a proportion of operating cost, goes up for the ISP, then something has to break. Either they introduce some type of allocation (metered plans) or the overall quality of service needs to go down (they oversell more). It's not some grand conspiracy, it's *possibly* money grubbing, but it's far more likely just trying to keep on top of a ballooning cost.
Really, unless you're streaming hdtv 24/7. it's *not* a huge issue. I have 60gb/month in total, and even when I'm leeching a bit I'll be lucky to go through half of that. Often I'll only use a couple of gigs. And I'm still considered a _heavy_ user ffs.