Usage-based-billing turned out to be not a complete disaster in Canada. ISPs were no longer incentivized to use deep-packet-inspection to interrupt or throttle connections. Regulations required incumbents to grant access to last-mile networks to smaller ISPs to encourage competition. Users had more choice -- plans differentiated on both speed and on bandwidth caps, so if you needed a small amount of data in a month but you needed it quickly, you could still save money by picking the right plan. ISPs were encouraged to build out their networks more, since increased speed led to increased usage led to more recurring income: if you wanted the fastest speeds now and could pay $200/month for it, you got it; if you didn't, you could get Internet faster than the average American "high speed" connection for something like $30/month.