Quite apart from the discussion of whether those who use a greater share of available bandwidth should pay more for said usage (but of course, it's only fair and logical), where, pray tell, is the acknowledgment of the 800lb gorilla in the room: the fact that our ISPs and the FCC (and the vaunted "free market", generally) have utterly failed us when it comes to the development of network infrastructure?
Google any string along the lines of "US broadband internet speeds europe japan" and you'll uncover a mountain of studies and statistics indicating that, in America, we have some of the worst, slowest internet access in the Western world, and pay amongst the most for this "privilege". The average US broadband speed, in megabits/sec, is somewhat less than 2.5, according to industry trade groups. The average in Japan, e.g., is more than SIXTY (60) mbps. South Korea's is about 45 mbps. Western and Northern Europe is relatively pokey by comparison, by still blows the doors off what's available in the richest, most powerful country on Earth, as The Netherlands comes in at a few ticks over 20 mbps (the "few ticks" in this instance being about equal to the entirety of what we get, a thought which makes me want to vomit), Sweden comes in at about 18 mbps, France clocks about 17.5, and Jesusfuckingchristonthecross, Poland--POLAND!!!!!--offers average speeds of about 7.5
Congratulations, FCC and ISPs, you've given us a regime in which a bunch of first-gen capitalists are beating the living shit out of us on Xbox Live because, well, let's admit it, we're HPBs by contrast. All of us. Except the FIOS owners.
Back when I was in undergrad at a large public Midwestern university, I worked at the IT department supporting operating systems, hardware, and, yes, TCP/IP networking. Right around '95 or so, following the release of Netscape 1.0 and the emergence of the web, many students were desperate to get broadband connections. But they were completely unavailable at the time--the only options were either dual-channel ISDN (still pretty slow even in those days), or, haha, to double your tuition outlay by having a T1 brought into your home (which really wasn't an option at all). The U had an ultrafast ATM connection of its own, and soon began retrofitting all of the dorms on campus with ethernet connectiosn so students there could hop on as well. Guess what happened? Incredibly, several 20-something students, juniors and seniors and even some grad students, who had been very happily living off-campus, decided to apply to move back into the dorms....just to get fast, cheap internet access.
That's basically where we're at now. I've been living in my present city for about six years now and am pretty bored with it (no real outdoors recreational opportunities for hours in every direction b/c its set in the middle of a cornfield) and will probably move just to spice things and try something different. Incredibly, very high up on my checklist of places to consider relocating to is whether a given city has, or will in the foreseeable future have, access to Verizon's FIOS. And I hate Verizon, I actually paid a contract termination fee to get rid of them as a cell provider years back.
This strikes me as insane, but there it is. Simply put, we have some of the shittiest internet service options in the whole of Western civilization. The AICs of East Asia are literally 20-25 times faster. Most of Western Europe is 5-10 times faster. Congratulations, though, America--your entrepeneurial spirit has managed to fend off the likes of Greece and Moldova, so you can crow about that accomplishment.
This, not "bandwidth hogs", is the real problem with internet access here. Fix the one, the other ceases to exist as a meaningful entity.
