Consumers tolerate this because they have no choice. We continue to pay AT&T $30/month for unlimited data service that often stinks like a dead fish. (Sorry for the graphic analogy, but I was thinking about a circa-2001 Network Computing cover story we did on carrier service level agreements, where the cover art showed an SLA being used to wrap up dead fish, like an old newspaper. That summed up the value of carrier SLA's in those days.)
That leads us back to the practice of flat-rate pricing, an element that almost never gets raised in the discourse about network neutrality even though it is a business practice that is inherently unfair to users. It also puts carriers in a position that makes them feel pressured to impose back-door usage restrictions, especially on broadband wireless networks. In this regard, you can certainly understand why a wireless carrier might want to restrict bandwidth-intensive applications like streaming media.
I've always found it interesting that in an era when broadband is increasingly viewed as an essential public utility, it is one of the only utility services that isn't metered. Some small municipalities provide flat-rate pricing for water services, but for gas and electricity, the usage meter is king. Even with cellular voice services, most usage is metered. Why should broadband data services be different?
The answer, of course, is customer preference. From the earliest days of dial-up networking, consumers made it clear that they hated metered usage for Internet access services. Carriers responded by providing flat-rate pricing, setting the monthly rate high enough so that they would make up for losses from bandwidth hogs by over-charging casual users. It's a pricing scheme that is inherently unfair and it works against efforts to make broadband more affordable, but any actions to change these policies are greeted with hostility by the most vocal advocates for network neutrality.
Perhaps it's time to rethink flat-rate pricing. If carriers charged for usage, they'd have no justifiable reason for denying customers the freedom to run whatever application they choose. For casual users, monthly costs would decline. There would be no prohibition against carriers offering flat-rate pricing, but they could do so only under the condition that they did not discriminate by application. It's not clear whether consumers would have the stomach for usage-based Internet access, but if advocates of neutrality are really interested in fairness, this seems like the logical way to go.
