Aborting throttling is definitely a good thing.

However the caps and overage fees are definitely an issue, and I can see this being part of a plan to get that bandwidth used up earlier, and collect the overage fees. Dirty, but we should know better than to assume they're doing something for the good of the customers.

I'm still dreaming of the day when the physical layer is run by an agency that has no relation to the provider, and the provider of your choice can hook up at the CO.
The current setup is too much of a conflict of interest, and they'll want low caps so people use their TV services and such. This should never be...

Similar to cell plans with unlimited nights and weekends, usage-based-billed broadband also ought to be cheaper during periods of low demand when there's plenty of spare capacity. If I were on such a plan, I would stream movies less and download movies more, during the wee hours, to save money. The ISP would also save money by not having to add capacity just to prevent the network from getting congested a couple of hours each day.

Everybody wins with efficient pricing.

Oh, they finally got it through their heads to listen to the users and the common good?

Not even close. Did you happen to see this part of the article?

In all likelihood, the change of heart is based on the fact that Bell has moved most of their customer base to, and offer no alternative to, low-usage-cap UBB packages, which would ultimately generate more income or deter full usage of their service (and thus require less infrastructure investment).

So basically, what Bell is saying is, "Now that we've got all our customers right where we want them, and we're squeezing every cent out of providing bandwidth, with customers paying more to get less, we would just as soon not have to worry about any government regulations."

It has nothing to do with any pro-consumer decision on Bell's part. It has nothing to do with Bell being concerned about their customers well-being. It has everything to do with what used to be a public utility turning customers upside-down and shaking every penny out of their pockets. Bell is going to continue to ignore you. They will continue to lower caps and raise prices. They'll continue to avoid spending money on improving infrastructure. They'll continue giving you the finger. But now that they're feeling their oats, they're going to give the government the finger too.

Traffic-shaping is a bad thing. Anything that is not providing neutral telecommunications services to customers is a bad thing. Bell doesn't have anything against filesharing, as long as you're ready to pay out the nose for every byte. They're still enforcing the government's rule, but they're making sure they're going to make big money in the process.

Don't be an idiot. Traffic shaping is fundamentally necessary to manage a network whose capacity is less than demand (basically any public network). Abusive and discriminatory traffic shaping is a bad thing.

You have an interesting idea of "generous". Two hours of Netflix a day and your cap is gone.

50GB is generous for a 50Mbps connection? That's only 3 hours of downloading at your full bandwidth. Or 25 hours of HD Netflix streaming (less than an hour per day). Or 10 DVD ISO's.

Comcast's 250GB limit seems much more reasonable, even if I "only" get 15Mbps

Do you work for Cableone?

That's why I'm on TekSavvy [teksavvy.com]. They offer the same speeds at slightly lower prices but with a 300GB cap. They even have a 5M/unlimited plan.