Bandwidth-based billing is the wave of future not regulation

The call for net neutrality regulation, or banning Internet tiers, runs completely counter to the highly-successful, commercial evolution of the Internet.

A recent Cable World article by Paul Kagan "Paying the Piper" highlights this truth, that the "wave of the future" is bandwidth based billing. Usage-based billing is exactly opposite to one-size-fits-all net neutrality regulation. More usage-based billing better serves users becuase it allows them to buy just what they need. Light users pay less and heavy users pay more. As Kagan aptly points out, this is "a marketplace pricing solution that encourages consumers to regulate themselves."  Â 

Allowing the market to respond to the wide variety of consumer needs, means and wants, is by far more efficient than the government mandating an arbitrary one-size-fits-all price. The net neutrality proposed solution would result in light users (most people) paying too much for bandwidth to subsidize the few bandwidth hogs.  And net neutrality would also stifle any incentive to innovate to meet the high bandwidth demands of the early adopters of new bandwidth-intensive applications. Â 

Since the Internet was privatised in 1995, the Internet grew phenomenally because market forces have been able to offer differentiated services to meet the very different means, needs and wants of Internet users. The original monopoly dial up price prompted competition from cable broadband offerings, which in turn prompted price competition from DSL, which in turn has prompted the emergence of wirless broadband alternatives, which in turn is prompting bandwidth based billing.  

Broadband competition works.