Why do some ISP's have bandwidth quotas?

Mon Oct 8 11:24:41 UTC 2007

On 4 Oct 2007, at 22:52, Vassili Tchersky wrote:

> In Europe, the only ISPs where i've seen bandwith quotas was some
> cables operators, while in Canada bandwith quotas seem to be still in
> place at many ISPs.

In this bit of Europe (UK), it's the opposite: the cable companies  
(CLEC style companies) tend to run unlimited (but within fair use)  
aggregate throughput policies, but the DSL operating companies have  
to impose aggregate throughput caps because the last mile  
connectivity is run by the national incumbent.

Bandwidth here is cheap on the face of it (ethernet presented ip  
transit is a bargain, exchange connections are not expensive, peering  
happens widely too), but because the last mile hurts, this affects  
consumer pricing.

I wonder if this is the case in the OP's country.

Andy