50 GB Blu Ray disks DO have a place in the future if you really care about the best in movie quality and are a frequent movie watcher. High Definition Blu Ray quality streaming content isn’t yet ready for widespread use because it eats up bandwidth that is going to cost more than customers realize. You’re not going to get that kind of bandwidth for “free” in your present cable charge.

It seems that a lot of people still rely on a cable subscription, although with alternatives like Hulu, Netflix on demand, etc., that might change. If/when that does, just expect your ISP bill to go up to make up for it, unless there is enough competition to change things.

Let’s think about this from another perspective, maybe one of an investor:

Board Member: “Ok, we’ve done great so far, but with the economy being down in general, our rate of new subscribers is starting to slow. We increased text messaging to 20 cents per text, but it’s only a matter of time till the FCC stops that. We need to find a way to charge people more to bring up our revenues.”

CEO: “Let me present my plan for our home ISP pricing, and how to increase our revenue. At the same time, we’ll be decreasing our expenses.”

Board Members: *golf clap*

CEO: “As of now, everyone pays the same regional rate for home internet connections. 5% of our users make up 50% of the usage though, and the top 1% use 2x%. Why do we all charge them equally? We should put a “limit” in place that only affects the top 10% and charges them either. By doing this, we’ll definitely increase our revenue because they won’t all immediately use less than the limit, and at the same time, we’ll decrease our expenses.”

Board Members: “Why didn’t we think of this before?!” (repeat golf clap)

My thoughts – what’s the issue with this? I have no issue charging the largest users of a resource more than others. It’s like if we all paid a set price for as much water as you could use. What happens when one person is filling up his pool, watering his garden, etc., and you’re someone who doesn’t do any of those? Why do you all pay the same rate? What happens if all the pool owners use more and cause the monthly rates for everyone to go up? Won’t people complain and say that if you fill up your pool with water, you should be the one paying more?

What is my issue with this? Who decides where the cutoff will be? As the post and article both describe, our needs will change over time. Will there be enough competition (Clearwire?! Hello?) that we won’t have to worry about these cutoffs or will someone oversee that aspect on behalf of the consumers? (I know very little about the FCC, maybe it would be them though?)

Overall: It doesn’t matter if they have horrible or amazing infrastructure, their expenses should be separate from what they charge us.