This whole thing I think happened because TMNet chose to market their plans with an emphasis on connection speeds. 512Kb, 1Mb, 2Mb, etc. In actual fact, nobody surfing the web is going to notice big difference on all three plans.

The difference comes in the total amount of bandwidth that the users will be able to utilize, and this turned out to be a real problem. It's like marketing multi-gigahertz processors to people who just want to do Word processing at home. It's not a right approach, but at the time it seemed like a good idea.

I think the threadstarter is right in that the inevitable direction this entire fiasco will lead to some sort of bandwidth limited plan. Connection speeds will probably all be the same (to avoid confusion) and we will be charged based on how much we download.

But the figures given the the threadstarter appears too good to be true though. I for one am not so optimistic on being offered 10gb/day limits. For one thing, my friend in Australia is on a PREMIUM plan that maxes out at 40GB a MONTH.

The problem with trying to define the limits is the question of how much is bandwidth worth? How much does it cost to transport a gigabyte from here to, say, the USA is? And is such a comparison even valid because not all our connections are going to the USA. If we can answer this question, then maybe we can home in with some guesstimation on what the bandwidth limited plan might look like.

Yes, it's true that TMNet screwed up big time with their promotion. Users sign up thinking (primarily) that they will be able to P2P at their leisure at maximum speeds 24/7. I used to enjoy that liberty and watching my torrents do 3gb a night. Now that it's barely doing 300 mb, I feel cheated.

But the reality is, there's not enough bandwidth to go about. Sure, we used to be able to get those insane (but nonetheless deserving) speeds, but at what expense? Exactly how much P2P is damaging our network is unknown, but AFAIK reading Slashdot, it's EVERY ISP'S WORST NIGHTMARE. Is the frequent disconnections and spotty service the result of P2P? I'm not a network technician so I don't know. But the reality is still this: there's not enough bandwidth to go about.

When you have too many people on the bridge, the bridge is going to collapse, no doubt about it. Right now, the perfect solution would be to get a bigger bridge, then everybody would be happy right? Well, that's only a temporary solution. I agree with the threadstarter in that we're probably way underpaying for the amount of bandwidth (not speed. I don't care about getting 10Mbit lines if I can only download 40gb with it a month) we are enjoying. The cost of building a bigger bridge might simply not scale with the amount that TMNet is charging people right now.

Note that the last statement is purely based hypothetical. I'm not sure what the prices of bandwidth is. I base my assumption that we are underpaying simply from studying the plans of foreign ISPs.

The question still remains: how much should we OUGHT to pay for bandwidth?