Comparative to Milwaukee, I'd be guessing delivering high performance internet and making enough money to fund expansion and eat is harder at a non US ISP. It's harder, but there's nothing wrong with it. It compels you to get inventive.
The costs to provide DSL up here in Milwaukee are kind of insane,
Insanity is a relative term :-) Try to deliver Internet outside of the US in countries that share western culture and you'll start to understand why caps are seen as an excusable form of treatment for the insanity.
Okay, so, let's pretend that today I'm sitting in Sweden. Go. Extremely high speed connectivity, uncapped, well in excess of what is delivered in most parts of the US. I was just informed that Road Runner upgraded locally from 5 to 7Mbps a month ago, and has a premium 15Mbps offering now, but there are folks with 100Mbps over there. So, your point is, what, that it's easier to deliver Internet outside of the US in countries that share western culture? That could be true, we're tied up by some large communications companies who don't want carrier- neutral networks to the residence. If we just want to start making up claims that fit the observed facts, I would say that the amount that a user can download from the Internet in countries that share western culture tends to decrease with distance from Sweden, though not linearly. AU gets placed on the far end of that. :-) (That's both a joke AND roughly true!)
Clearly they're not something we'd prefer, but they are useful to manage demand in the context of high costs with customers who benchmark against global consumer pricing (or those who think that the Internet is a homogeneous thing)
...Hmm, that's a good idea, perhaps you should do that (get out of the US) before you start saying what we're doing is "wrong with your business" or "insane" or perhaps unreasonable.
And I agree with Mark Newton's sentiments. It's completely delusional of you to insist that the rest of the world follow the same definition of "reasonable". We're not the same. Which is good in some respects as it does create some diversity. And I'm quite pleased about that :-)
Well, since I didn't insist that you follow any definition of "reasonable", and in fact I started out by saying : Continued reliance on broadband users using tiny percentages of their : broadband connection certainly makes the ISP business model easier, but : in the long term, isn't going to work out well for the Internet's : continuing evolution. it would seem clear that I'm not particularly interested in your local economics, no matter how sucky you've allowed them to be, but was more interested in talking about the problem in general. I *am* interested in the impact that it has on the evolution of the Internet. That you're so pleased to be "diverse" in a way that makes it more difficult for your users to join the modern era and use modern apps is sufficient to make me wonder. There's certainly some "delusional" going on there. ... JG -- Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net "We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN) With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.