Question for Mr. Gruber: do you think pay-per-byte cable/DSL internet would be a good idea also? If not, why not? If yes, how do you explain the market's overwhelming preference for flat-fee over pay-go?
Obviously, ISPs could charge by the byte. To my knowledge none do, for reasons others have mentioned already. We don't like thinking about the marginal cost of web pages, and nobody wants a nasty surprise on their internet bill at the end of the month.
Tiered pricing isn't germane to metering. A power company might place me in one service tier, and a megawatt aluminum smelting operation in another. They might pay less per kWh than I do, but we both pay ~20% more if we use 20% more power. OTOH, while Time Warner will let me pay an extra $10 to upgrade from "5Mb" service to "15Mb" service, my monthly bill is fixed regardless of my usage level.
More importantly, he isn't praising the moves so much as saying that he will save a few bucks with the new plans, and that for all of the problems 3G on an iPhone with AT&T is less shitty than another product a MiFi.
I get the sense you're reviewing other things he's written and not this specific post.