[Update 1:30pm: Kate Perry, the story’s author has responded:

I’m the reporter who wrote the TWC story for the D&C. First, I didnt rewrite a press release (ouch!). They didn’t even issue one. They broke the story to BusinessWeek and never contacted ayone else.
Today’s story obviously left a lot of unanswered questions (I had 45 minutes ’til deadline to write the piece by the time I finally heard back from Time Warner at 9:45 pm Wednesday) but I thought it was important to get the basic info out there for our readers. I have already posted another story on the website to answer some more questions and I am in the process of writing other follow-ups. Just thought I’d let you know I’m not napping on the job.

I appreciate the clarifying information and the fact this story is not at all the last word the D&C intends to print.  The story we referenced came from the D&C site as of mid-morning today.  It was entirely lacking of any contrary perspective, which was why this article was written.  Should you have any questions from our end, or our readers, send them this way and we’ll get you answers. — Phil]

Why subscribe to a newspaper like the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle that can only be bothered to essentially reprint a press release from Time-Warner?

The D&C’s article telling Rochesterians about Road Runner’s new Internet rationing plan never bothered to say a word about the other side, much less do any independent investigation of the facts.  I guess we’re the media now.  Let’s break it down.

The days of flat-fee Internet charges are dwindling if your provider is Time Warner Cable. Prepare to pay by the gig.

Starting this summer, the company will ask customers to review their usage and pick a plan from 5 gigabytes to 100 gigabytes. If customers use more gigs than their plan allows, they’ll have to pay overages. The new billing system will roll out this fall.

First, this Internet rationing plan is only being imposed on customers in a handful of cities, not across all of Time-Warner’s service areas.  And the company has yet to announce any pricing for their 100GB plan, which we predict will be astoundingly pricey and is frankly still woefully inadequate for consumers who have families that utilize broadband video streaming and other bandwidth intense services.  Comcast doesn’t penalize their customers with higher priced tiers with draconian limits.  They simply tell residential customers to keep it under 250GB per month.

The 5-gigabyte plan will start at about $29.95 a month, Time Warner spokesman Alex Dudley said Wednesday.

And that is about the first and last time you will really see much about this plan.  Time-Warner already offers a lower tier of service for light users, yet almost never promotes it.  Is the company truly on an altruistic bent to save light users money with a plan that you have to peel out of them to discover?

A majority of Time Warner’s customers currently have the standard tier plan, which costs about $49.99. The soon-to-come 20-gigabyte plan will cost about the same and allow customers similar Internet usage.

Similar to what?  The standard tier plan is priced at $39.95 a month for most customers in this area, not $49.99 (unless you do not have a cable TV package.)  It’s hardly “similar” to anyone who uses over 20GB a month, and that is going to be a lot of folks in this area, either currently or in the near future, if they’ve discovered many of the Internet’s broadband-leveraged features, many of which Time-Warner heavily promoted to sign customers up in the first place.  They giveth, and now taketh away, unless you cough up $1/GB more. But how would Mr. Dudley know? He’s not from Rochester. He’s a corporate spokesperson in New York City. When he goes home tonight, his Road Runner will not be rationed.

The new payment plan will be more equitable, Dudley said. Now, a small portion of customers use a massive amount of the company’s bandwidth;  the 25 percent who use the most bandwidth consume 100 times more than the 25 percent who use the least. With the current flat-rate plan, everyone pays for the upgrades to Time Warner’s system that the heavy users’ habits require.

Last summer Frontier tried the same argument.  But when StoptheCap! asked to see their data or independent verification of their claims, we were denied because the data “was proprietary.”  So we take their word for it?  I have no doubt there are extraordinarily heavy users on every ISP’s network.  Those running illegitimate servers, keep peer to peer file swapping applications running 24/7, and those with unsecured wi-fi in their homes can rack up some serious bandwidth usage.  Of course, under their existing subscriber agreements, ISPs have the right to warn and discontinue service for these individuals, many of whom may not even realize what is going on in their own homes.

But independent analysts have no way to verify whether Time-Warner’s claims are inflated puffery, like the “national bandwidth shortage” scare we were hearing about last summer, or represent the dire need to make an immediate change.

All of the warning signs point to a naked cash grab, because of the number of inconsistencies in Time-Warner’s arguments that the D&C can’t be bothered to explore.

With the new plan in place, those who want to use a lot of bandwidth will have to pay for it.

Dudley said increased Internet usage across the board, especially video downloading, has required the company to constantly improve its broadband infrastructure, something that will continue in the future.

“Our customers used 50 percent more this year than they did last year, and we expect them to use 50 percent more next year and the year after that,” he said.

The good news is, most customers won’t pay more, Dudley said. The plan is already in place in Beaumont, Texas, and 86 percent of the customers there pay the same as they did with the flat rate. Of those who pay more, the average monthly overages are about $19, he said.

Beaumont, San Antonio and Austin, Texas, Greensboro, N.C., and Rochester were selected to be part of the usage-based payment trial because they represent a diverse collection of Time Warner users, Dudley said. The results of the trial will determine if or when the company rolls out the payment restructuring nationwide.

You bet they’ll have to pay a lot for it.  Let’s break down how much, for the average users that other cable companies are considering realistic when they develop usage caps:

A 50GB household formerly paid $39.95. They will now pay $64.95.
A 75GB household formerly paid $39.95. They will now pay $74.95.
A 100GB household formerly paid $39.95. They will now pay $114.95.

(based on Time-Warner’s proposed $54.95/40GB tier + overage charges)

And Time-Warner’s argument falls apart on several other levels the D&C account doesn’t consider or question.

If the majority of subscribers are on the lower end of bandwidth growth, where is the urgency to move their rationing plan into place with such draconian caps?  AT&T’s u-Verse sees their average customer usage potentially warranting a usage cap at the 100GB level, something we’re not convinced about either.  Comcast, the nation’s largest cable operator, has a simple limit of 250GB per month on residential customers.  No massive rate increase for customers using the Internet for media streaming who have to find a higher tier.  No draconion limit before subjecting them to outrageous overage charges.  Verizon FIOS has zero usage caps.  It’s a sales point for them, to give customers a reason to switch and to give them the comfort they deserve in using the Internet without having to watch some “gas gauge.”  Is Verizon nearing bankruptcy and crisis with their non-capped service, which runs faster than Road Runner and is provided on an all-fiber network?  Of course not.

And the dirty little secret is, despite Dudley’s claims, this Internet rationing plan is not being “tested” anywhere where they face competition from Verizon FIOS.  It’s a diverse collection of Time Warner customers who all just magically happen to live in areas where competing ISPs either offer significantly poorer service or have plans to institute their own caps or have considered doing so.

But there’s more.  Beaumont, Texas is not Rochester, or Austin, or San Antonio, or Greensboro.  StoptheCap! looked at the Beaumont trial last summer and found it to be hardly representative of what Internet customers would find acceptable.  The Beaumont trial only applied to new customers, not to existing ones.  That skewed the results to show favorable acceptance only by those who signed up for new service figuring they would never exceed the caps.  Yet 14% did so anyway, and many of those were likely first time broadband customers.  And an average monthly overage of $19, half the price of the original monthly subscription, is nothing to sneeze at.

Indeed, we also do not know for certain what happened to those customers who received overage charges.  Did they cancel service and head for a competitor?  Did they succumb to Time Warner’s rationing plan and simply force themselves away from the computer?  Did they force themselves to pay more for a higher tier, or simply discover they maxed out at the highest tier then available (40GB) and will forever more be paying those overage charges on an Internet that is always growing and expanding.

As a customer, do you feel it was “good news” if you didn’t see any price change if you manage to stay within your tier or were you simply relieved?  Are you upset that you now have to be ever watchful of some Road Runner “gas gauge” that ticks ever downwards towards empty everytime you receive spam, everytime some hacker tries to break into your home network, and everytime you do anything on an Internet that is becoming more and more a multimedia bazaar.  Oops, that web ad just cost you a nickle. If Time Warner’s own numbers are right, you can do your own math.  Every year, under threat of overage fees, your consumption is going to increase by 50%.  How long before you find an ever growing Internet bill in your mailbox, with sky high increases coming month after month with no end in sight?

When Road Runner was introduced in Rochester in 1998, I among a handful of others were the first consumer beta-testers of the service.  It’s been a great experience and an excellent service. That’s all about to end because the company has decided to abandon its current business model, which afforded enough revenue to make a handsome profit and still invest money to grow their network and provide support. It’s more profitable to adopt a rationing plan to artificially reduce demand, which then requires fewer investments in network growth to support. It also has the side benefit of stopping the growth of video streaming online, which cable industry analysts ponder might one day threaten the cable TV package. If enough content can be streamed through Road Runner, why have a cable TV package at all? Slam a cap on customers to make that prohibitively expensive, and they can stop pondering.

And the irony is, the same company that tells its customers it cannot afford to give you a-la carte access to limit your video channel package to just those channels you want to watch at a lower monthly price, is the same one telling you that they must drop the unlimited plan they’ve provided for more than a decade because it “cannot afford” to give it you any longer.  Unless, of course, you live in an area where a competitor has no trouble doing that.  No Time Warner usage cap there.

It’s a shame the D&C couldn’t spend a few minutes exploring this themselves.

I’m still getting over the shock of learning this morning that once again, Rochester NY is going to be ground zero over a major broadband usage cap nightmare. After spending a large part of last summer battling Frontier’s ludicrous 5GB usage cap, which they have suspended implementing, at least temporarily, I get the news that Time Warner is about to devastate this, and three other communities, with the same kind of outrageous bandwidth capping they’ve dropped onto the good people of Beaumont, Texas.

Coming later this summer, according to an article in Business Week magazine, Time Warner will introduce usage caps similar to what is in place in Beaumont. For the average Time Warner customer in Rochester, Greensboro, North Carolina, and Austin and San Antonio, Texas, this means standard service customers paying $40 a month will be limited to 20GB per month, those paying $54.95 a month are limited to 40GB per month. Exceed that at your financial peril – overage fees are $1 per gigabyte.

You don’t need this, and I sure don’t need this. If you review this site, you’ll read the whole sordid history of just how outrageous of a gouge on customers this represents. It’s rank profiteering, not “cost sharing” as their marketing people like to put it. For my western New York city and hometown of Rochester, this is absolutely devastating to our competitiveness and image as a high tech city in the ever-struggling western half of this state.

While upstate and downstate cities from Buffalo to the suburbs of Long Island will escape cap free (for now) because of the aggressive development of Verizon’s FIOS network, Rochester is stuck with the dreary and uninspired Frontier Communications with a DSL product that can never come close to hoping to compete on an even keel with Road Runner, yet had the nerve to try cell-phone like usage caps on their customers last year.

With competitors like that, Time Warner can do whatever they please in Rochester. Frontier again has an opening for marketing gold to drop the idea of usage caps and run an ad blitz telling Road Runner customers they’ll never have to worry whether they can watch Hulu, or play someone else online, or download something from iTunes, because they are not going to throw a draconian cap in your face. The stampede exiting Time Warner would be a sight to see. Frontier can bring themselves a massive new customer base. Alas, I have little confidence Frontier is that inspired. Perhaps they can prove me wrong.

Barring that, Frontier will foolishly bring back their own crazy cap and stick Rochester in the broadband doghouse for years and years. When Penn Yan has unlimited FIOS and Pittsford has a father yelling at his son his five minutes of Internet time is up because of the cap and the cost for exceeding it, we’ll all be down the rabbit hole.

One thing is certain, I cannot fight this battle alone. I am going to need article writers, folks to help organize people not only in Rochester but in the other affected cities, as well as outside help from those who may not have the cap today, but soon might tomorrow.

Broadband policy in this country cannot be allowed to deteriorate into de facto duopolies which ration access at ridiculous prices. Consumption based Internet access only works and is justified when the mark-up is nowhere close to the prices Time Warner and other companies want to charge. A better policy recognizes that no cable company or telephone company has gone broke with their current pricing model. To the contrary. Investments bring profits. Enhancing your existing service with add-ons like Road Runner Turbo is a quick and easy way to bring an extra $10 a month and make everyone happy. Heck, I’d suggest a whole lot of moderate users of Road Runner would rather see an across the board $5 rate increase than these kinds of caps. Or at least the potential of a rationally priced unlimited plan offering, which is simply not available with these kinds of usage caps.

Today’s announcement from Time Warner is a broadband game changer akin to a category five hurricane for many online users. It’s literally the end of things like Apple TV, Slingbox, Netflix’s set top box, and even frequent viewings from Hulu and other future video providers. The bandwidth allowances just make using those products and services untenable. And it only gets worse if you’ve got a family with computers around the house. Those are just more chances you’ll exceed the cap.

The Pearl Harbor moment from this company today brings a day of shock, surprise, and contemplating your options, if any. Tomorrow it brings anger, conviction, and organization to make a difference and send a message that no company can be allowed to get away with this sort of thing. I hope you’ll join the fight.

One of the major problems in waging a battle with large corporations is being able to protect yourself from potential legal harassment and bothersome lawyers that want you to go away and stop organizing and fighting the fight.

With some behind the scenes arrangements to better handle potential “difficulties,” we’re now back in business. And at just the right time, as we learn Time-Warner has decided to dump unjustified bandwidth usage caps on four more American cities, including my own hometown of Rochester, N.Y. Nothing gets you more energized that confronting a ridiculous cap on a service you use to bang out these articles on this website.

I appreciate the continued loyalty of readers and commenters who are still coming back to look for new things. It has been too long, but now we’re back in it again.

BREAKING NEWS: Frontier Communications has modified their position on the 5GB usage cap yet again.   Your pushback on this unjustified 5GB monthly usage cap has continued to make a real difference in getting company officials to listen to reason.

Frontier’s website has been changed again, now deleting the portions of their DSL sales pitch which used to reference “5GB” of included access per month.   Additional changes have been made to their terms and conditions pages.   Still present in Frontier’s Residential Acceptable Use Policy is the language which defines their usage cap at 5GB per month, although they don’t formally call it that.   Instead, they consider 5GB to be a “reasonable” amount of usage, and reserve the right to terminate accounts that exceed it.   However, some other language has been introduced as Frontier backs off from implementing their cap formally:

The Company has made no decision about potential charges for monthly usage in excess of 5GB.

Company officials have repeatedly said they will not penalize customers who exceed the 5GB “reasonable” level they define in their Acceptable Use Policy, which is to be commended.   But as Frontier Communications has been continually modifying their position on the cap issue in general, both in comments to reporters and on their website, customers have no guarantees what they insist today won’t be much different tomorrow.

StopTheCap! calls on Frontier to do the right thing and remove this entire “5GB” section of their Residential Acceptable Use Policy altogether.   It is this language upon which the entire 5GB usage cap debacle was built, and Frontier can show its good faith by eliminating it from their website  if they truly want to put customers at ease.

We have also learned that Frontier has taken another piece of our advice: to launch a campaign to better educate and inform their customers about how bandwidth is utilized, and ways they can reduce their usage voluntarily.

StopTheCap! strongly believes that consumers are willing to review what they are doing with their Internet connections and will reduce usage voluntarily if they understood how certain applications can consume bandwidth even if they don’t seem to be running.   And it’s a win-win for customers who wonder why their Internet connection seems so slow without realizing someone in the house is running a torrent server 24/7, or has a computer infected with a virus that is churning out millions of spam e-mails without the owner even realizing it.

Treating your customers right means allowing them to  take advantage of the myriad of new applications and features a broadband experience can provide, without a draconian limit on that usage.   And customers have a responsibility to better understand what they are running on their computers.

There are several additional developments about Frontier’s 5GB usage cap, and we’ll be publishing a roundup of the latest news, including your comments and what company representatives have been telling you, shortly.

This remains a developing story.

Comcast’s announcement that it would implement a usage cap of 250GB per month comes on the heels of the company’s entanglements with the Federal Communications Commission, who spanked the nation’s largest cable operator for purposely interfering with Internet traffic  Comcast felt constituted a problem on its network – namely torrent traffic.

Cable operators face the evolution of cable modem service from something primarily valued by a minority of Internet enthusiasts into a “must-have” product for more and more Americans.   And with the spectacular growth of the Internet, new applications are being introduced daily that are specifically designed to take advantage of the speeds that broadband promises to provide.

Just 24 months ago, the “problem” was peer-to-peer traffic, such as file sharing networks and torrent applications.   Customers fired up their trading software and often let it run for hours on end as they attempted to grab the latest software, TV show, or movie.   File sharing software can consume an enormous amount of bandwidth, as users share  files with one another, uploading and downloading pieces of a favorite TV show or movie until a complete file is assembled.   Good etiquette dictates leaving the software running even longer to help make sure everyone else in the queue  can  complete their download as well.

The result was a lot  of traffic going in both directions.   Most networks in the United States are designed to handle people receiving more files than sending them, and file sharing software began to challenge that paradigm.

Soon enough, broadband providers began complaining that this kind of traffic was tying up their networks,  designed for what company officials thought  average customers  would do with their Internet connection.   People consuming a lot of bandwidth downloading music or movies required operators to spend more money to expand and enhance their networks.

Ironically, the same companies complaining about file sharing created their own “problem” by marketing cable modem service as the fastest way to… download movies and music!   DSL, they said, kept you waiting for your favorite show while cable modem service guarantees your show will be ready the moment the popcorn is popped.

The earliest theories of the artificial “bandwidth crisis” offered by companies annoyed with having to keep up with the demands of their customers, suggested that file sharing traffic would be the death of the Internet as we know it, as torrent traffic completely clogged the network, consuming any and all available bandwidth.   Godzilla’s destructive powers had nothing on file sharing, which could literally create a global Internet crisis.

Comcast decided it could address the torrent traffic problem by inspecting the bits and bytes of traffic running across its network and, at certain peak times, substantially slow down the delivery of that traffic.   Their theory suggested that this would protect other customers  from the neighbors eating up more than their fair share of bandwidth.   In practice, it essentially crippled the usefulness of running any torrent application.

The FCC would have none of it, telling Comcast it cannot discriminate against the traffic being carried over its network.   The answer to the traffic problem was to build better roads to  manage the traffic.

Instead of simply agreeing to keep up with demand, Comcast has now approached this “bandwidth crisis” from a different angle.   It has simply put a limit on the amount of traffic each subscriber can utilize on its network during a 30 day period, regardless of what that traffic represents.

Comcast’s suggested limits on bandwidth gave a number of broadband providers the idea that they, too, could slap caps on their customers.   And since the usage cap question was first raised nationally earlier this year, the suggested caps have gotten lower and lower from each subsequent company testing or implementing them.

Cox has “informal” caps of up to 75GB  per month in some areas.   Time-Warner began testing caps of up to 40GB per month in Beaumont, Texas.   Frontier announced a forthcoming 5GB usage cap, which is among the lowest in the United States.    In Canada, companies have gone even lower with caps like Rogers’ 400MB monthly cap for their $60 wireless Internet plan for iPhone owners.   Canadians were so outraged by that cap, Rogers eventually had to relent and create a 6GB monthly service package for $30.

Usage capping cable and DSL providers  are in a race to  the bottom as they try to learn  how low they can  go without creating mass  defections among their customers.

Some Comcast customers have told Stop the Cap! they are relieved that at least they are on the top of the usage cap pile with  Comcast’s 250GB cap, which at first  glance appears generous.   In fact, only a small minority of their customers will currently exceed that kind of usage cap.

But regardless of how generous a usage cap appears, it still raises a lot of questions.

1. If informal efforts to control “bandwidth hogs” have been so successful, why bother with a cap at all?

For several years, Comcast has informally enforced its own internal interpretation of a usage cap with customers who consumed incredible amounts of bandwidth, usually as a result of running a home-based torrent/peer-to-peer file server, web server, or other application that runs contrary to the residential acceptable use policy.   Company officials send warnings to customers who consume hundreds of gigabytes of bandwidth every month.   Comcast’s own public statements indicate such warnings are usually successful.

“We know from experience the vast majority of customers we ask to curb usage do so voluntarily,” Comcast notes on their website.

So why bother the 99% of the rest of your customers with a formal usage cap if they don’t come anywhere close to exceeding it?   It’s awfully hard to convince people of a broadband bandwidth crisis if you also claim the overwhelming majority of your customers consume less than 5% of your proposed cap!

2. While most people won’t come close to 250GB of usage, unless they are backing up their files through an online backup service or are downloading a very large number of files, the usage cap that seems generous today is draconian tomorrow.

The biggest problem usage caps bring to the table is the artificial drag they create on innovation.   In the global race to be leaders in the emerging Internet economy, the United States was in a strong position to lead the world in  high bandwidth next generation applications like streamed high definition video programming, store-and-forward video on demand and Tivo-like recording, storing TV shows online and delivering them to you on demand, online file backup services, high quality video teleconferencing,  new “cable-TV”-like services over broadband which compete with cable and satellite providers, and more applications  yet to be dreamed up.

Just ten years ago, when most cable modem service began to really get off the ground, the Internet of the late 1990s was very different from the Internet of today.    A usage cap based on what customers did then would likely be under one gigabyte  a month, as users satisfied themselves with low  bitrate RealAudio streams, slideshow-like online video, and  a  World  Wide Web considered primitive by today’s standards.

As broadband Internet became established in a growing number of consumers’ homes, the applications to take advantage of the increased bandwidth followed.    Voice Over IP telephone services, high quality streamed audio and video, and online file storage would never have been developed based on the Internet of the late 90s, and would never have gotten  off the ground in a world with usage caps.

High definition streaming video consumes  many gigabytes per hour.    It’s among the very first exciting applications being made available to consumers with broadband connections, but will die an early death if usage caps are the order of the day.

3. Usage caps are anti-competitive and convenient, particularly as those who mandate them have a direct interest in limiting the potential of competitors that exist today or cannot get start-up funding tomorrow.

Usage caps actually do nothing to solve the “bandwidth crisis”  the cable and DSL companies suggest are on the verge of killing the Internet.   They merely restrict the  natural growth of traffic, allowing companies to pocket higher profits and spend less on expanding and enhancing their networks.

More importantly, cable companies conveniently put a stop  to plans to bring competing  multichannel video packages to consumers over the Internet.   The “cable company online” model exists today with providers like SkyAngel, which delivers Christian and secular “pro-family” programming to its customers over a set top box connected to the Internet.   More than 65 channels ranging from TBN to Animal Planet and The Weather Channel reach their customers over broadband for a monthly subscription fee.    SkyAngel’s service is in peril in a world with usage caps that will limit viewing to as little as  a few hours per month before exceeding usage caps.

Netflix and  some satellite dish companies offer video on demand programming utilizing the Internet to deliver the programming to subscribers.   In a world with usage caps, you will be stuck watching those programs only  from your cable company or local video rental store.

Future businesses that seek start-up funding to build the  high  bandwidth applications of the future will get a  guaranteed rejection once potential investors learn that consumers will be unable to  take advantage of those applications because they will exceed their usage caps and have their service shut off.

Of course, the convenient exception  to the usage cap world comes  from companies that partner with that cable or DSL company.

Frontier has already announced it  will exempt its partners from their 5GB usage cap.   ESPN360 and their online backup service preferred partner will enjoy the benefits of an uneven playing field in the marketplace because they aren’t subject to a usage cap.   Everyone else is.

What about  Time-Warner and Comcast?   Will their partner services  also enjoy exemptions from  usage caps while everyone else is forced out of business when customers discover that using them  puts them over their monthly limit?

What about Voice Over IP?    Cable companies are giving telephone companies a real headache by offering telephone service over cable lines at highly competitive pricing.   But  independent companies like Vonage and MagicJack don’t enjoy the benefit of being  exempted from  usage caps limiting the number of calls you can make or receive.   If you are owned or  are partnered with a cable or  DSL company, your service gets a free pass from the usage cap.   Everyone else is  potentially buried by it.

4. The punitive measures suggested  for those that violate  usage caps scare customers into using their connections even less, to the great benefit of the bottom line of the broadband provider.

What’s  the best way to make sure your customers use their connections as little as possible?   Impose outrageous penalties for exceeding usage caps.   Comcast proposes to send a warning letter first, but then potentially turn off a customer’s service for six months to an entire year if they dare to use their broadband service more than the company wants.

Other providers have discovered the tangible benefits of the “penalty rate.”   It guarantees striking fear into the hearts of your most hearty customers, when to exceed the cap means paying 50 cents per MEGABYTE for traffic above and beyond your capped limit, as Rogers charges Canadians right now.

Download that one hour episode of CSI: Miami, and pay up to $175 in penalties on your next bill.   Ouch!   Imagine the conversation at that family’s dinner table after your son or daughter downloaded a TV show before you had a chance to tell them you were at your monthly limit.   Horatio Caine can then come and solve the homicide at your house.

It all comes down to paying the same or more money for less service.   And if you are potentially going to have your service cut off or outrageous overage fees billed for exceeding that cap, you will make darn sure you don’t even come close to it out of fear of exceeding it.

Being in the “bandwidth shortage business” means more profits for you, less service for your customers.

The best part about imposing usage caps is that you get to invent word of a “bandwidth crisis” to justify penalizing your customers, provide absolutely no independent evidence to prove such a crisis exists, reduce your investment  in keeping your network up with the times, and help protect your product lines from pesky competition.  

After all, your cable modem or DSL service was among your most profitable products before usage caps were even proposed, but now you can make even more money.   And if a competitor ever does arrive without usage caps, you can just drop them and go back to making a decent profit instead of one that rivals the oil industry.