I think part of the problem is the US structure for providing internet access, one of the advantages of living somewhere small like the UK is that one company runs out the phone access everywhere and every company uses that network, so we don’t have regional suppliers unless yo want cable. Over here we also have price plans that mean if you pay more you can get more. I currently get ‘unlimited’ broadband although that will get shaped for torrents certain downloads and if I abuse it by downloading movies 24/7 then I’d expect to have my usage questioned.

I expect they will get pressure from companies like Apple (iTunes TV and Video) and the film industry as those companies would view a cap on the consumer as limiting the amount of goods they can sell. As part of my Broad band package I get an extra TV box that has some basic channels and allows me to rent movies and TV shows, so they can’t limit it that much or they wouldn’t be able to supply those products. I think once internet companies get on that band wagon they will ease limits.

1) In metropolitan cities and college centric areas its not uncommon for 3-6 people to share a connection in a house.

This is HUGE. If each of these are “connected” people, and watch Netflix or download HD movies (always legally of course) then all of a sudden all of these numbers go down considerably. This quickly becomes each person being able to watch 2-3 movies a month instead if you have 6 people in a house/apartment.

Also (unsure of what differences they are allowing for business plans) many offices (I used to work for Time Warner’s Road Runner in their business division) use Comcast cable for their business purposes. It’s become the “Cheap T3″ basically. Your office of 20 people now needs super strict caps on usage to make sure that you’re not causing massive overages. 10gb/work day isn’t much at all for 20 people to go through. That’s 500MB/person.

2) EVEN IF this amount was ok and acceptable today, it won’t be acceptable in 2009. Think about your internet usage in 2007 vs today. Thing about your internet in 2007 vs 2006. In 2006 most people were just finding out about Youtube and using it lightly. In 2007 people were starting to use Hulu and other higher quality streaming programs. This year youtube added higher quality streaming and Hulu went “higher-def” (not really HD yet). Every year you roughly double your bandwidth consumption.

In two years, this “250 cap” will be as if it is a 62.5GB cap. That’s simply not acceptable.

The speed overall online is increasing. Comcast isn’t keeping up. The rest of the world is. Keep in mind the money that we allocated (gave) to the cable companies in the 90′s to get us all on SUPER high speed stuff by now. Guess what? They took the money and ran. They can’t account for it.

The cable companies are trying to screw us. Bandwidth is getting cheaper and cheaper, and yet they want to gouge us more.

I feel that this is going to simply hand Verizon and instant win wherever FiOS is available. I know if I could get FiOS that I’d get it instantly.