To be more precise it would have had merit if Internet metering was at least remotely technically feasible.
IBM Israel has been handling its leased line and Web sites with metering since day 1. We have a an NV/6000 application that polls the routers where the leased line has the interface or subinterface to the customer. We have a table indicating what the line speed is. On the 1st of every month, the user is automatically emailed an accting report indicating line usage and as a percentage of the total max thruput. We have a number of levels (10%, 30%, 70%, etc.) and the user pays based on their actual thruput levels. We track each virtual Web site for thruput also but bill based just on disk space allocated (simpler model than for leased lines). Hank