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I have no stats, but gasoline, food, electricity and water are, generally, a constant price and value. I suspect internet usage, especially if a person hosts a

• mikeash 15y ago
  My electricity bill varies by a factor of 4 over the course of a year, since the bulk of my electricity use in winter and summer is heating and cooling. This is true of a lot of people I've talked to, and they all get by fine just the same. People who host web sites or dedicated video game servers are usually already paying for usage. Some hosts offer "unlimited" plans but most charge for bandwidth. Somehow they survive. Let's say your internet fluctuated by 50GB/month. Comcast is currently effectively charging me 20 cents/GB right now (~$50/month with 250GB cap). Even if this rate doubled under some hypothetical pay for usage plan, you're talking about fluctuations on the order of $20/month. If you can't tolerate that then you probably have bigger financial problems to worry about. Recall that the current situation with most ISPs is not actually unlimited. It's just that when you exceed their arbitrary and usually private limits, instead of charging you more, they make your connection stop working or they fire you as a customer. (With Comcast, if you exceed 250GB in one month, they warn you. If you do it again, they fire you.) Having your bill go up for additional usage is better, not worse, than having your connection stop working altogether.