As we recently noted, Cox Communications appears to be the latest ISP to prepare for metered billing as they slowly deploy a new usage meter across markets. While they've made nothing official yet, a user offers up the screenshot below from the company's own usage tool that indicates Cox will ultimately begin billing users for passing their cap. Customers are informed that the allowance portion of the meter website "shows the amount of data usage included in your plan each billing cycle," and that users can consume more, but "will be billed for any amount you use over your allowance."

ISPs give numerous justifications for imposing new overage fees. Sometimes they'll insist the moves are about congestion (not really an issue on well managed modern landline networks), while other times they'll insist it's a move forged out of financial necessity (despite flat rate broadband being very profitable). If they're lazy and eager to insult their customers' intelligence, they'll insist it's about "improving the customer experience" while pretending billing you $5 per gigabyte in the age of HD streaming video is about "fairness."

What's actually happening is ISPs are taking full advantage of dismal US broadband market competition to dramatically raise prices while artificially constricting the pipe, charging prices utterly detached from any real-world provisioning costs. It's a tactic that not only allows them to overcharge for a service that costs increasingly-less to provide (investors certainly love that), but it comes with the added benefit of protecting TV revenues from Internet video.

With Cox competitor AT&T also pushing toward overages, there's absolutely no organic market force in place to prevent ISPs from increasingly over-billing subscribers for bandwidth once overages are in place. Meanwhile, ISPs have consistently struggled to meter usage accurately -- but there's not a regulator in North America that has shown the slightest interest in ensuring consumers are billed fairly.