600GB is not huge. It it tiny. That is half my steam library. A quarter of my backblaze backup. A crash event and I will have to wait half an year to recover my stuff.
I see your math problem. And it has some solutions:
1. Nightly speeds - this was used in my country by the ISP-s when all caps on speed were removed after 1am to 6am with QoS on 80/443
2. Non guaranteed top speeds - you allow people to go up to some speed if your network is underutilized.
3. Metered - I think that is the best approach if the pricing is right - a person cost me 20$/month just to be connected to my network (fixed costs). You ask him for 30. A terabyte moving in/out of my network costs me 2$ - you ask him for 3$. If you have 1 TB - it is 33$/month, if you want to seed a lot - be my guest. You get your margins on the traffic. And you are transparent to your customers. (yeah I know decision fatigue, but it could be solved with prepaying and just allowing access to payment sites when the prepayed traffic is over).
That's half your steam library. As in, you could re-download literally 50% of every Steam game you've ever purchased in your entire life.
It's also not a hard cap. It's just a warning light. If you go over 600GB, police do not show up at your house and cut off your internet service. It's simply an goodwill indicator. If your routinely jumping over 600GB use, you ought to be paying for a higher tier plan, like a 'power user home plan'. (If you restore your entire backblaze and steam library every single month -- something is wrong)
But otherwise, I agree with you on many of these points.
- Nightly Speeds : If the lines aren't saturated, your free to use as much as you please. (ISP's have to pay for that connection 24/7, so if it's not in heavy use, your free to run wild. Won't bother me any). This is done already.
- Non-guaranteed top speeds : This is also already done. Plans are advertised with separate dedicated and bursting speeds. Just because Comcast is deceptive on advertising, doesn't mean all ISP's are.
- Metered : I personally am fine with metered billing, if the price is right. However, literally no regular person is ok with this. Unless your super technical, you won't know how much bandwidth your using, and won't sign on for this plan. (especially now that Verizon / Sprint / AT&T charge $15 per gigabyte, people are conditioned to flinch whenever they hear anything remotely similar to 'metered billing').
I see your math problem. And it has some solutions:
1. Nightly speeds - this was used in my country by the ISP-s when all caps on speed were removed after 1am to 6am with QoS on 80/443 2. Non guaranteed top speeds - you allow people to go up to some speed if your network is underutilized. 3. Metered - I think that is the best approach if the pricing is right - a person cost me 20$/month just to be connected to my network (fixed costs). You ask him for 30. A terabyte moving in/out of my network costs me 2$ - you ask him for 3$. If you have 1 TB - it is 33$/month, if you want to seed a lot - be my guest. You get your margins on the traffic. And you are transparent to your customers. (yeah I know decision fatigue, but it could be solved with prepaying and just allowing access to payment sites when the prepayed traffic is over).