pi4t: Your metaphor seems off. This isn't about inventing a faster, more expensive plane/internet system, it's about reallocating what we have. In terms of planes (and ignoring the technological impracticality of what I'm about to suggest - it's a metaphor!), it's more like removing some of the engines from some of the planes and putting them on other planes to make them go faster, then charging more for the "hyperfast planes". People who aren't prepared to pay for the fast planes will be stuck with planes which are going slower than they used to be, due to having fewer engines, and will still be paying the same price.
Note that I'm not necessarily trying to argue that this is a good or bad thing - it's far too late at night to be coming to conclusions like that.
MarioFanaticXV: But there already are faster and slower services- and it should remain as such. Not everyone needs the speed that Google or Netflix does. And if they're using up more bandwidth? It's only natural that they should pay more for it.
The problem is, some people are trying to argue that by allowing cheaper services and more options, that this will somehow hurt consumers, when the exact opposite is true. A one-size-fits-all package is never good for consumers. Sometimes, you want economy mail because it's cheap and you don't need it to be fast. Other times, you want to pay that extra money for priority or even express mail to get a package to its destination sooner.
Similarly, not everyone wants or needs to be buying the top tier internet service package.
Hmm. I can see your argument, and agree that it might be reasonable,
if the price was set according to how much bandwidth people are actually using. As far as I can see, and correct me if I'm wrong, if this was allowed there would be nothing to prevent ISPs setting prices according to different criteria which are absolutely not consumer friendly. For instance, increasing the price for a website if they happen to stand to profit from one of its competitors doing well, to try to drive people to the competitor. Even if they're obliged to set each speed at the same price for everyone, they can still inflate the high prices to an amount which won't seriously affect the big companies already getting large profits, but which will act as a bottleneck which smaller companies won't be able to afford, and thus prevent the smaller companies from growing to a level where they threaten the big ones. If the ISPs will benefit from reduced competition for the biggest companies, they'll probably do that.
According to the website the OP linked, this would also give ISPs the ability to block any website they want, which is a seriously bad thing. They'd be able to completely cut people off from any website which was threatening them, for a start, which would basically destroy peoples' ability to compete with them online. That's not to mention more ethical issues of censorship, blocking things like news websites they with a different political leaning to them, or websites like the one the OP linked, set up when they try to push worse things into law.
For your second paragraph, the problem is that - to me, at least - it doesn't look as if it will offer cheaper services. In my experience, they'll continue charging the same amount as they currently do for their "current" service, while introducing the "hyperfast lane". The trouble is that by using more of their infrastructure on people who pay more, the "standard" service will get worse, while they still charge the same amount.
Incidentally, thank you for responding calmly, rather than giving the usual internet response of "Argh, you disagreed with me! Clearly, you deserve to die a horrible death!"
