Tiered pricing for broadband
As broadband access continues to become more and more expensive in many markets, tiered pricing based on your usage level is headed your way according to this Wall Street Journal story (subscription required). Hopefully, that means a price break for most of us who're not heavy users of bandwidth since we're not exchanging large files like music and videos.
Cox said it has rolled out this plan in a few select markets, with further expansion in 2004. The premium version costs $79.95 to $89.95, while the low-cost choice goes for $24.95 to $29.95.
People who hog up Internet bandwidth have been a growing problem for the industry since the emergence of peer-to-peer file sharing services. According to industry data, up to 60% of the Internet's total bandwidth is used by 5% of the users entrenched in file swapping on sites like Kazaa or Grokster -- services that allow people to trade media files through the Web.