Summary
1. Too much government compulsion often results in the law of unintended consequences. 2. It is reasonable for an ISP to charge an additional sum for the relatively small percentage of users taking advantage of a lopsided amount of capacity. 3. As a result of the “pressure” from consumer groups and “politicos,” the average user is now likely to pay considerably more for Internet service.
Analysis
While a tiered pricing structure may have been inevitable in the long run, if the corporate bashing horde stayed out of the way, the vast majority of users would have avoided paying more for additional capacity. Time Warner Cable does give the politicians what they are looking for – more bandwidth availability for all of its subscribers. Still, the lowest speed package is not going to be enough for most of the consumers – and so they will have to take the higher tier offerings -- along with the new overage charges. Had the MSOs been allowed to just cap excessive users, most of the subs would have continued to receive a reasonable amount of bandwidth at the same flat price.
Ironically, all of the illogic obsession with net neutrality will result in even more of a usage-based pricing scheme. There will now be several layers of capping. The anti-ISP crowd has actually created a more beneficial pricing system for these companies. And there is certainly nothing unfair about this development. But the clamoring for so-called equality resulted in an acceleration of the removal of the all-you-can-eat advantage for consumers.
