Chocking the Web 3.0 before it is born

Not sure how many of you are aware if a recent an impending 250 GB bandwidth cap by Comcast starting Oct 1 (http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Comcast-250GB-Cap-Goes-Live-October-1-97294 and http://gigaom.com/2008/08/28/comcast-makes-metered-broadband-official-beware-what-you-download/.) Time Warner is already testing one in Texas with tiered limits as well.

Of course, ISPs are going to want to charge by the GB - it is their scalable revenue model; And why should the ol’granpa pay more or work at a slower speed to check his email once a week.

However, I can see a war erupting between service providers claiming their application is “less bandwidth hungry” or “better HD for the same low-bandwidth”. It is especially going to hit advertisers as now, users will want to only view low-bandwidth ads and will start complaining if a paid service starts to hog their networks with ads and unnecessary information.

In all this, I don’t think there would be any backlash. Possibly, the limits are aimed at very (I mean extremely) heavy users. The kind that would want to constantly download and upload something or the other.

Your comments and thoughts are welcome.

Ram.