Poll: Will Metered Broadband Make You Switch Your ISP?
While not so uncommon overseas, bandwidth caps and metered broadband are coming to the US market place. Time Warner is the first major cable company to announce its metered broadband strategy & prices for a small Texas market, in what can be described as draconian.
We have written about Bend Broadband of Oregon resorting to such tricks. Comcast, recently proposed bandwidth caps as well. What it means: get ready to pay more and get less for broadband. Will this spur into action, and switch ISPs or look for alternatives. Take our poll and share your opinion.
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intersting, but idiotic. I wonder if they have done any international due dilegence? I live between france and the US. When I moved overseas 5 years ago metered plans were the only thing available. Although I am not a sector expert, I do not know of even one ISP in France that continues to operate that way. Seems it didn’t work out to well for them with consumers here – to me this will only work for those with no money and need a budget option, or super penny pinchers. As for the rest of us junkies…. I’m guessing we’re going elsewhere if this is what the big guys intend to try stateside…
Considering what i pay Comcast a month, hell yeah i would switch if they pulled this.
This makes complete sense – people balk at the idea of a “restriction” on their usage, but the reality is that you’re most likely currently paying to offset someone else’s broadband usage. If 10% of users are using up 90% of bandwidth, why shouldn’t that 10% be forced to bear the cost?
What about the opposite argument. ISP’s who fail to deliver bandwidth due to their own network loading and topology limitations?
Well, I’d think the two solutions, from their point of view, would be either bandwidth shaping, or metered pricing – I for one would definitely rather have the latter, it would at least give me the OPTION of using more bandwidth.