broadband pricing

This is a snippet from an email i read today

This is so not good. Every other broadband ISP will be watching
closely to see what happens from this trial balloon. "Time Warner
Cable will launch a trial program on Thursday which will impose
monthly Internet consumption caps on new subscribers in Beaumont,
Texas. Following a two-month grace period, cable users will pay $1
for each additional gigabyte consumed beyond the cap."

40GB FOR $55 PER MONTH: TIME WARNER BANDWIDTH CAPS ARRIVE

By Ryan Paul, Ars Technica, June 03, 2008 http://tinyurl.com/3oufk8

Welcome to the rest of the world - ok - actually i don't know what happens elsewhere in the world but this is certainly welcome to NZ & broadband

here's some comparisons

i have a paradise/telstra 80GB plan (that's an 80GB cap)

i pay $139.95/month + $2.95/2GB over the cap for up to 10 Mbps/2Mpbs (when there are four people on the wireless network here it's not that fast!)

we always go over the limit ... as of today my usage meter tells me " You have used 129.31 GB which is 100% of your monthly traffic allocation, plus an additional 25 block(s) of usage costing $73.75 " - the meter resets at midnight tonight so for this last month i'll pay around $220 - $230 for our internet

telstra has a 'warpspeed' plan (but not in my city) of 120Gb for $230 but i get a better deal on the 80GB plan

Telecom's biggest plan (broadband) is 50GB for $149.95 + 2c/mb over the cap - i'm not even going to do the math for that one

one company offers unlimited broadband but that's at $495/month which is way more than i spend currently

with 3 teenage boys (one just arrived last week) - one of whom skypes regularly to talk to his family in china and also watches TV (chinese) online; one university student/massive downloader person - - and me all on wireless and all on the internet for large periods of time (it's called research!!) we need the broadband and the fast internet ...