Why do some ISP's have bandwidth quotas?

Fri Oct 5 16:38:29 UTC 2007

On Fri, Oct 05, 2007, Joe Greco wrote:

> > Technically the user can use the connection to it's maximum theoretical
> > speed as much as they like, however, if an ISP has a quota set at
> > 12G/month, it just means that the cost is passed along to them when they
> > exceed it.
> 
> And that seems like a bit of the handwaving.  Where is it costing the ISP
> more when the user exceeds 12G/month?

No, its that they've run the numbers and found the users above 12G/month
are using a significant fraction of their network capacity for whatever
values of signficant and fraction you define.

Adrian