For Aussies, ISP plans are capped. A 30 min show is about 300MB. My ISP is Telstra (as the only ADSL2 provider in my area) and I get 25GB for $100/month. Therefore my 300MB download costs $1.20 in download fees alone, or an extra 40% over the $2.99 ask.
What size will movies be? what size will HD movies be? At 4$ /GB I wont be getting any. I believe in data caps, as access to the internet is a finite resource. But $4/GB is too much. The Aussie ISP's know that we are going to need/want much greater data limits to access this new way of acquiring video entertainment. I believe it should be around $1/GB today and only get cheaper as each year passes. Otherwise it will become bracket creep like we have in our income tax rates.
Or, I'll want my ISP to filter out advertising and spam, which consumes data that I didn't ask for or want. Every page you browse on the net is full of graphics and flash stuff that we pay for, yes we do. Because we pay $$'s for that data. I'm annoyed that this hidden cost isn't more transparent to Aussie consumers. There are moves in the US to cap (ie count) your data. Beware of what that means.
BTW, there are many Aussies on low cap plans ie 200MB, 600MB or 2GB / month. At their rates, if they are not careful, will be charged 15c/MB on any excess to their caps. It happens every day. That TV show the 15yo daughter downloads for $2.99 ends up costing 300 x 15c = $45.
Our dominant ISP of course does not charge (but still counts) for bandwidth usage when downloading from their own Music and Movies site. This will give them an unfair market advantage, which they have been exploiting, unchallenged. Oh of course all of Telstra (BigPond) services are Windows only, so your Mac is a 2nd class customer, so you can't even utilize the uncapped data they provide, aside from the occasional Leo Laporte podcast that is 3 weeks old.
I shudder to think what Telstra's data plans are going to be like if they reach agreement with Apple to sell the iPhone, but that's another story about to unfold.
BSR
