Some of these seem actually well thought out, but some of them feel pretty unrealistic. I don't think most of these are actually going to happen. My guess is that the bandwidth tiers will be somewhere pretty high so that it only causes problems for big downloaders. Most "Web 2.0" (think Google Docs) apps are already pretty modest with their bandwidth usage - you can use them pretty well even in mobile data networks, so I don't think that's going to affect people's behavior that much. I'd say streaming video and bittorrent would suffer the most from these caps.
Maybe the biggest effect of metered usage will be more emotional than rational.
Most people don't appreciate that 30 minutes editing Google Docs consumes 100x less data than a 30-minute Skype audio call. And the Skype call consumes 100x less than streaming a Netflix movie.
With flat-rate pricing there's no urge to conserve. But when there's a cap or penalty pricing people will almost certainly use less of everything.
I doubt much/any of this will come to pass, speaking as someone who has always had to deal with download limits, it's really not THAT big a deal.
We here in Australia have been subject to tiered broadband pricing since day 1 - I feel pretty comfortable in saying that whatever pricing US carriers come up with, it will be much lower than here in AU, simply because you don't need to haul most of your data thousands of KMs via undersea cables. My ISP has a range of ADSL2+ plans from AU$50/month for 150GB data through to AU$120/month for 1TB data. (There's also an entry level 30Gb for $30 plan for your grandparents)
>(There's also an entry level 30Gb for $30 plan for your grandparents)
I managed to find a real unlimited connection (here in England) so I might be a little out of touch with broadband allowances, but I think 30GB is on or above the high end of what you can get here in most places without spending a mint. Of course, they all label it as 'unlimited', which apparently is legal despite being very blantantly fraudulent advertising.
Hell, T-Mobile recently sent me some blurb trying to persuade me to replace my ADSL with their 'unlimited'* mobile broadband.
* Fair use policy applies. Bandwidth is limited to 3GB/month.
Look at their non-LLU packages, 30GB/month is ~£20/month. I think I'm paying for 60GB.
It's only the really huge mass-market ISPs that are offering £5-10/month packages with 1-3GB of data transfer. Once you get away from BT Broadband, Sky, and the like, you can get some decent deals.
Having recently been researching this, while I agree that there's a blatant truth in advertising problem there, T-Mobile do seem rather better than average. If I go over the quota on O2 (for example), I get a bill. If I go over quota on T-Mobile, I get my speed cut down below a level where I can use multimedia services.
