Andrew Harries, CEO of network hardware maker Zeugma, not too surprisingly has penned a missive in the Financial Times suggesting he's had a change of heart, and that he now likes the idea of metered billing. Harries, who at least admits he has a vested interest in selling hardware that tracks and meters usage, unfortunately goes on to fill his piece with a laundry list of pro-metered billing talking points that ignore countless broadband industry realities.

To start, like an author for Slate did a few weeks ago, Harries makes the mistake of confusing idealized pure per-byte billing with the metered billing models most carriers hope to implement: namely plans that offer low caps and high overages, don't really offer consumers value, and are really simply designed to have everybody paying more money, not just heavy users. He also, like most metered billing proponents do, argues there's a bandwidth crunch coming that makes metered billing absolutely necessary lest carriers run out of money:Actually, not really. Once again, if Harries bothered to look at ISP tax records, he'd see that carriers are making remarkable profits off of the flat-rate broadband billing model -- not even mentioning the money made from added services, a litany of fees, and advertisements. The argument that modern ISPs don't "earn a profit" is intentionally obnoxious. Meanwhile, if he looked at substantive network data, he'd see that Internet capacity demand (at least for wired networks) can be met with only modest capacity upgrades.

From where does the capital come that is needed to expand broadband capacity further? -Zuegma CEO Andrew Harries, pretending ISPs don't make enough money to upgrade their networks.

According to Harries, consumers who are opposed to metered billing are the intellectual equivalent of grumpy electricity customers who don't want to pay their bills. Unless you warm up to the idea of metered billing, argues Harries, you'll simply have to be "satisfied with underinvestment in capacity," and clogged tubes.

Again, like all metered billing proponents do, he's ignoring the healthy financial reality of most carriers, overstating the looming bandwidth crisis, and insulting consumer intelligence with a broad wave of his hand.

Many consumers quite possibly would enjoy a pure, pre-byte billing model but again, that's not what carriers are proposing. True equanimity will never truly materialize under the per-byte pricing models proposed by carriers, because the vast majority of their customers would wind up paying virtually nothing for bandwidth. There's millions of iPhone customers who do little more than check e-mail. What happens to AT&T profits if they suddenly started paying only for the bandwidth they used, instead of the mandatory flat $30 data fee?

The existing flat-rate price-by-speed model isn't perfect, but it provides healthy, scalable revenue for carriers (more than enough to handle capacity growth) and is simple to understand for consumers. Again, where's the problem?

There is no problem for consumers. They're perfectly happy under the existing model. And the problem for carriers isn't one of capacity, necessity, or fairness. Carriers simply want low caps and high overages so they can make additional money off of Internet video and next-gen content -- and protect their TV revenues from the threat Internet video poses. Investors want metered billing because it's essentially a rate hike. Hardware vendors want metered billing because they can sell more hardware. Right Mister Harries?

That's obviously the job of ISP execs, hardware vendors and investors. But their arguments would be immeasurably more honest if they stopped pretending this was an issue of fairness and dire necessity, and simply admitted there's one reason for metered billing: to help already profitable companies make additional money. Dressing up greed as altruism or scientific necessity simply adds consumer insult to injury.