Currently in USA we enjoy a very simple approach to paying for our Internet access. It is typically a flat rate plan which is based on the speed of the access and then use it as much as you want. My recent trips to Australia have always had me amazed that even the so called unlimited plans had a monthly cap on the amount you could download before either a very restrictive throttle on the speed occurred or worse per MByte charges kicked in. My son who is currently in Australia, closely monitors his monthly downloads (which when he lived in the US were significant) and has become very selective at what he does because of these caps.He yearns for the uncapped access of the US (even though they are not as speedy as those in Japan).

The circumstances of Australia are that distances are long, population is small and most of the internet traffic is going to or coming from USA and Europe. According to this very interesting article, it is these circumstances that force the service providers in Australia into these pricing models. Increases in the access speeds to customer and the evolution of Web 2.0 services like YouTube and peer to peer services like bit torrent (sometimes referred to a Channel BT for the amount of TV programs that are being downloaded using this) have encouraged many users to take full advantage of their high speed access. The interesting point of the article is, however, that Australia is just a harbinger and that eventually all countries and ISPs will move to pay as you go rather than all you can eat due a higher percentage of customer not only having higher bandwidth but having the motive to actually use it. We already see in some unlimited wireless plans that they are not really unlimited at all. Did I hear somebody say Net Neutrality?