Now, if facts were shown that the ISPs have to pay per byte and they were overselling for years - then ISPs have a leg to stand on for charging insane pricing per byte. But, the fact is ISPs DO NOT pay per byte, they pay by the bandwidth. If I bought a T1, there is no limit on how much I can download or upload, period. Same thing goes with an OC line. The only limit is how much data I push down the pipe at any given time.
Pretty simple really. See the link above for the math involved. Mainly this is used however in hosting platforms and not on ISP type connections. Mainly I think because the last mile loop is costly vs the bandwidth being used, and it's probably over the head of some people.
I would honestly like to see residential connections to match the billing of style of backbone connections. IE. You pay Telco X for a line, then pay company Y for bandwidth and a cross-connect to Telco X. This way we can switch providers whenever you want, and only have issues if we need to get a different physical connection to your building.
