[sliverstorm]

As I see it there are three reasons the tech community hates usage-based billing.

- First, any time a company tries usage-based data billing, they charge absolutely criminal rates. If you paid attention to usage-based cell service over the years, you'd know what I speak of.

- Second, in an "unlimited" model, some users use more, some use less. In general the tech community will be the ones using more- so they benefit at the marginal expense of other users. They pay comparatively less by volume for their usage.

- Third, in my opinion there's at least a tiny bit of entitlement going around in the online community as a whole. Nobody wants to pay for anything. You know, because "information wants to be free!" and all.

[mikeash]

AT&T's overage rates are pretty reasonable. They charge $10/GB, which is about what you pay for the initial monthly data plan anyway. Of course, there's probably leftover sentiment from times when overages were much less reasonable, and there are still plenty of such places remaining.

The second two I agree with, but they're sad reasons.

[sliverstorm]

Rates have gotten better, I agree.