Universal coverage is certainly a goal of any ISP< but in rural areas without an extensive infrastructure in place, it is usually difficult, expensive and very high maintenance. Look at the difficulties plaguing some Native American reservations in the Southwestern US, where the only way to get dependable internet service is to pay through the nose for satellite dishes.

The ISPs would argue that tiered services is a way to ensure that rural areas get the service they need, since every user would be paying for what they use. If User A in the big city wants to pay for 100GB of downloading a week, that will make it easier to spend capital to create the infrastructure to bring at least minimum service to hard to access areas.

As a business model it has it’s merits, but we are used to “unlimited” bandwidth plans and having the ISPs think that leveraged services and advertising were the keys to making a profit for them. They assumed that the connection was the free razor and the services and content they provided were the income generating razor blade. They are slowly realizing there is no way for them to make their money that way. Content is the razor, free to anyone who wants it and can get to it…the bandwidth you use to access it is the razor blade, and that is where they will begin charging you.

Z

We need to remember we are still at the very beginning of this revolution. When cities were first wired for electricity, you paid a single fee to be connected, then used as much as you wished. As more and more people started using the same current, billing schemes were introduced so you paid for what you used. Bandwidth is the same way. the days of plugging into the stream and using all you could manage are ending as more and more people need to use the bandwidth…the age of service plans and enforced QoS is at hand, be that good or bad.

Today is going to be an issue for a few people, tomorrow many people are going to be affected by this.

I do see your point however. Heavy video use or power user downloading even without file sharing may start running into problems…or at least cost more for the same level of performance we are used to.

The bad news is that downloading large files, especially via P2P applications, will become much slower if it is not blocked completely, depending on the application used. Some ISPs will possibly then create service plans allowing P2P downloading, or allowing bandwidth to be bought in bursts, but we will see how the market for that sort of service matures.

I know from discussions with ISP project managers that most ISPs in the US, Europe and Asia are looking at creating specialized quota based Service Plans tailored to gamers (speed and priority), downloaders (volume) and Skyype/VpIP users (priority and guaranteed bandwidth) and then charging for them on a different scale from normal home and business plans.

Z