Sunflower Broadband Pricing - Note a $10/month surcharge applies for customers not subscribing to Sunflower's video package.

We’ve covered the story of Sunflower Broadband before here on Stop the Cap! This dubious provider has become well entrenched with its Internet Overcharging schemes in and around the Lawrence, Kansas region, charging top dollar pricing while imposing ridiculous limits on usage.  One Mac owner in the Lawrence area is fed up with Sunflower’s 3GB monthly usage limit for broadband users, charging a ludicrous $27.95 a month for standalone broadband service (that’s $9.32/GB!).  He’s calling on Apple Corporation to get involved in the opposition to price gouging and Internet Overcharging by providers like Sunflower.

Sunflower’s a big proponent of these pricing schemes.  Patrick Knorr, who works for Sunflower and is also ex-officio chair of American Cable Association, wants this kind of pricing for everyone.  No matter how much you consume, you are probably paying too little for your broadband account.  Sunflower’s pricing of its most deluxe Gold plan assumes you’ll never use more than 50GB per month, and for that charges customers $59.95 a month if all you want is broadband service.

Dave Greenbaum, writing for theAppleBlog, considers these kinds of limits to be abusive.

Apple is the leader in multimedia content creation; new Mac users are always pleasantly surprised by how easy it is to buy from the iTunes store, or create their own content. A common question we get in our local user group is “I’m not sure what I did wrong, but all of a sudden I have a substantial overage bill from my cable company.” Of course, the user did nothing wrong, other than subscribe to a few podcasts, and perhaps download a new Apple software update and buy some shows with iTunes! The Mac is also blessed with great online backup services like MobileMe, yet when our user group did a presentation on backup strategy, I had to warn novice users to be careful lest their backups end up costing them an arm and a leg in bandwidth overage fees!

Sunflower Broadband claims, with absolutely no independent verification, that nearly 50% of their customers consume less than ONE gigabyte per month and 98.9% of users had less than 40GB of bandwidth usage.  Of course, despite updates to its website, it curiously only provides statistics from April 2007, more than two years ago.

Greenbaum informs readers of Rep. Eric Massa’s proposed legislation, HR 2902, the Broadband Internet Fairness Act.

Ultimately, without an end to abusive broadband pricing, the implications for consumers go well beyond their own pocketbook:

Unfortunately, using the Internet normally with bandwidth metering is also unsustainable. When Mac owners are worried about downloading movies, doing backups or performing system updates, that hurts the Apple brand. Apple is continually innovating new ways to make the Mac OS the best Internet operating system, creating a whole ecosystem with iTunes, MobileMe and iLife. All of these great products rely on the ubiquity of the Internet. When Internet providers start making normal Internet use an expensive proposition, Mac users lose.

Apple should lead the way and come out against bandwidth caps. Given that many of the offerings on the iTunes store actually compete with cable TV, Apple should be vigilant that cable companies do not use bandwidth metering as a way to stifle alternative ways of viewing content.