Use more, pay more

We're used to paying more for our electric bill when we use more, say, when we hang our Christmas lights or crank up the AC. There was a time when you had no choice but to pay your phone bill the same way. For a long time now, however, many consumers like me have become accustomed to paying a flat rate (at least for local and/or domestic calls) for telephone service. While this system continued to work efficiently for a long time, now the flat rate approach is being re-evaluated when it comes to cable service and internet connections.

We know that under certain types of "shared medium" connections, heavy Internet use by some users slows down the connection for everyone else using that network. Cable service operators (Comcast and Time Warner Cable) now are entertaining the idea of delaying the Internet traffic of the heaviest bandwidth users, blocking and/or delaying video and file exchanges. Of course, those 5 to 10 percent of peer-to-peer users, who, according to this article by Cecilia Kang "Heavy Internet Users Targeted" use up about half of our Internet bandwidth - yet they're yelling "discrimination".

The article notes that Free Press said "the practice discriminated against certain content and impeded users from having full access to the Web." I'm not sure they're really being targeted - the cable companies argue that they're not looking at content, they're just managing their networks. If that's the case, then I have to agree that if you use more, it shouldn't come at the expense of everyone else's bandwidth. Heck if everyone used that amount of bandwidth, the networks would be crashing left and right.

I have to agree with Time Warner's approach using metered billing - if you're sending larger volumes of data you can have faster Internet access - but it'll cost you. If the systems can't support heavy use across the entire network, seems fair that those who need/use it should pay for the privelege.