Next thing you know, the electric company will give the manufacturer of electric space heaters for poor people a grant so they can sell more and cheaper space heaters to poor people, or perhaps a for profit water company will give away free lawn watering sprinklers to poor people.
They are charging $10 per 50GB blocks in some of the test markets, with the base cap now at 300 GB. Details: http://customer.comcast.com/help-and-support/internet/data-u...
- WFH (syncing toolchains or source repos over VPN, or downloading VM images)
- Dropbox, or syncing disks to backup services
- Constant streaming of music from Spotify/Pandora/Soundcloud
- 1080p video
- Gaming
- Youtube
With a 120 mbps internet connection, it's pretty easy to rack up usage quickly.
OTOH, people that exceed may be more likely to perform large transfers. If you're downloading at non-peak hours, there's zero extra cost to the ISP.
This kind of problem is unavoidable when the cost and price structures vary.
Netflix uses 2.8GB/Hour of streaming on its highest quality setting [1]. That's only 107 hours of video per 300GB. Now include four family members, and normal internet traffic...and voila you're over 300GB in one moth.