Google Fiber now allows servers for non-commercial use

Clearly defining the point at which the line is crossed hamstrings them when unforseen situations arise. Not clearly defining it allows for capricious enforcement. At either end of the spectrum one party loses out. This middle ground allows for both parties to be happy much of the time, but that's not to say no improvements can be made.

I would hope serious proposals for change would take both parties into account and try to find a better compromise.

Our typical "small office" connection is advertised as "60x60 bursting on top of a dedicated T1 connection". Which comes out to most people getting around 50x50 about 85% of the time, but always having a dedicated 1.5mbps waiting for you (so it can never drop below that speed, even if every subscriber maxed out their line at the same time).

We also do 'dynamically adjust the throughput for heavy users'. The problem is the heavy users are typically us, the folks on Hacker News who complain when their torrent seeds get slowed down. These are the users who complain about internet being 'oversold' when in reality, they alone account for 80% of their entire neighborhoods backhaul costs.

- - -

I encourage you, if you feel ISP's connections are so oversold, please try to start your own ISP. I'd love to offer everyone awesome dedicated connections, and I'll be your best friend if you can show me a way to do things cheaper :)

But I suspect you'll find out that it's not exactly the easiest business in the world to run, especially if your bootstrapping it.

> This is done because most home users could never afford internet, if they had to pay for full price.

There is an epistemological problem here about what "full price" means, which is subjective. I would argue that "full price" is simply "whatever AT&T/Comcast charges you". You seem to want there to be some "other" type of price that is the "real price".

Perhaps you are saying that ISPs make more money from business customers than from residential customers. Perhaps this is true, but the fact that it is convenient for the business model of an ISP to charge some customers more does not mean that other customers are not paying "full price".

Perhaps you are saying that residential customers are being provided connections that are below cost. But in an efficient market, an ISP could of course decide not to serve residential customers. Seeing as how ISPs continue to serve residential customers, it must be because residential customers are in fact paying enough money to cover the costs of the services they receive (e.g. "full price").

> The reason it's cheaper is because you agree to use it very lightly

You seem to be suggesting that the primary factor in network costs is use, but all the sources I read (for example this one)[1] suggest that connecting the last mile is expensive, and routing an arbitrary volume of packets over that pre-installed copper is extremely cheap.

If this is true, then it is the residential market that is subsidizing the high-margin business connections, because the sprawling (profitable, predictable) residential networks are the ones that are shortening the last-mile distance to (sparser) business links.

> What some people try to do, is 'cheat' that system.

There is an epistemological assumption in here that "the system" is fair or impartial or acknowledged in general by society or based on objective costs, or something.

> Home users never pay for most of the speeds they get.

I've covered this earlier, but just as an additional argument, I did a cost comparison, and consumer vs business class in my area for my ISP is merely double. Those packages all include website hosting, Exchange, Sharepoint, static IPs, 24x7 support, etc. Just as a point of comparison, market rates for 2GB of Sharepoint hosting are $25/month, hosted Exchange is $20/month, 24x7 support is who knows, etc... So fair to say, very little of the additional revenue could possibly be going to network costs.

[1] http://www.muninetworks.org/content/solving-middle-mile-avai...