setting a 'don't worry about it' limit in transfer, then charging a /whole lot/ per gigabyte above that is an established (though nearly universally hated) busi

setting a 'don't worry about it' limit in transfer, then charging a /whole lot/ per gigabyte above that is an established (though nearly universally hated) business model for ISPs. The logic behind the model makes sense; 95% of your customers use so little bandwidth that it doesn't make sense to charge them differently. the cost of having them deal with a variable bill is greater than the cost of the bandwidth. The problem is that you need some way to restrain that 5% who eat enough bandwidth to hurt you. Many ISPs (myself included) default to rate-limiting or disconnecting users when they go over the 'don't worry about it' quota, and then require users to take some additional action if they wish to pay more for more bandwidth. This is the solution that nearly all low end customers want. The disadvantage (for the ISP) of rate limiting or disconnecting users when they go over rather than charging a lot is that users are more comfortable approaching the limit if they know the consequence is that their service will stop working until the next billing cycle than if the consequence is a truly massive bill.