[blueben]

It makes sense now, riding on the back of years of growth fueled by demand. Bandwidth is cheap! Sure, I'll pay for a few extra gigabytes. But without the years of "unlimited" plans, we would still be living in an age of glacial bandwidth speeds at extravagant prices. The demand for bandwidth drives the cost of providing that bandwidth down.

Tiered usage charges slow growth. That's great for AT&T, but bad for consumers as it also slows the decrease in the cost of bandwidth. You save a few pennies, and we all suffer from the lack of investment to support growth which in turn drives innovation.

[batiudrami]

I'm not so sure that it does. I live in Australia, where we've always had limited downloads and speeds. When I first got ADSL (about 6 years ago), my AU$60 bought me 2GB quota at 256kbps. Now it gets me 120GB and I sync at 19Mbit (the fastest my phone line will allow).

The lack of competition in the US broadband and phone market is the cause for slow growth, not download limits. You can say that Australian broadband is still expensive and slow (in comparison to some countries) but that is at least partially due to the low population density and the massive distances between cities. Australia has 219 ISPs offering ADSL (source:broadbandchoice.com.au), and as a result the value for money offered has increased significantly in past years, and will continue to.