ISPs in the States (and Canada) keep hinting that what you're currently paying apparently isn't enough, and that to complete infrastructure upgrades an industry shift toward metered use is looming. The "Unlimited" model of pricing may be on its way out -- replaced by a pricing scheme where you pay for only the bandwidth you use.

The question becomes: which ISP wants to be the first to tell their customers that they're going to start billing by the byte? Unless the ISPs all change their pricing in unison, the first ISP to begin charging for the specific bandwidth used likely won't fair well in the marketing arena. Particularly if examination of their finances shows the move wasn't really necessary.

For now, ISPs have other ways of increasing revenue, such as advertising via webmail, selling your clickstream data, fiddling with DNS functionality or charging to get around spam filters. ISPs are also increasingly finding ways to offer less bandwidth to consumers, via traffic shaping and bandwidth caps.

Are ISPs really hurting so badly that such a shift is necessary? Do you support customers paying for the specific volume of bandwidth used?