said by B04:Does your natural gas supplier freak out and start "sniffing" (pun intended) your home to find usage patterns (stove v. hot water heater; wok cooking versus barbecue) because they're desperate to somehow twist more money out of their relationship with you?
They would if they could find a way, and weren't regulated as a public utility.
said by B04:Bandwidth is (or sure as hell should be) a utility.
Agreed. But the only way this can happen is legislation. There will be more and more abuses as long as ISPs are unregulated monopolies or oligopolies.