said by jmn1207:Don't get me wrong, I love the current flat rate structure, but the ISP does not have nearly as much control under this type of system.
By offering flat rates, as the technology moves forward and the speed and latency improves, it opens the door for innovative new products to establish themselves in the market, and with these new products comes consumer demand. The ISP's want to have as much control over when and where they spend resources on improvements. A per-byte billing structure offers far greater control over this aspect, as a properly implemented billing strategy would force customers to ration their bandwidth usage, while creating the ability for the ISP's to manage their revenues more precisely.
It's the dumb pipe panic. Per-byte billing is the most logical method for keeping things under control until the ISP's comes up with their own solutions that they can provide to customers in a way that just barely skirts the anti-competitive laws, gives them nearly exclusive control, and nets the largest profit.
Per byte takes the control away from ISPs and makes it harder for them to make the profit they want because monthly usage can change drastically.
Since all the costs are fixed regardless of usage if usage is low one month they are screwed.
It is simple since the costs are fixed and do not increase or decrease with usage it makes no sense to charge by usage.
