My cable TV & Internet provider is test marketing a scheme to penalize customers who use lots of internet bandwidth. Of course, their high speed internet access is billed as an "all you can eat" unlimited plan, so there ought to be nothing at all wrong if a customer wants to max out his connection 24x7. That should be the cable company's problem to provide the service that they sold and their customers are paying for. And it's none of their business if a customer is just reading the occasional email or downloading massive torrent files of movies and music. That's what "unlimited" means.

But the cable company doesn't see it that way. The underlying problem is bandwidth. Cable TV customers, in most cases, are still using the same copper coaxial cable that's been in use for the past 30 years. But in that time, added to the old analog cable TV signal, the cable companies now sell digital TV, high definition programming, multiple music-only "cable radio" channels, high-speed (sometimes) internet access, and digital phone service. The cable companies haven't upgraded the cable, and they've overloaded it with more and more services.

Now that they've hit the wall on bandwidth, instead of biting the bullet and upgrading the cable (maybe to fiber optic?) they point the finger back at the customer, claiming that some users are being selfish for making full use of the service they are paying for. And it's those damned internet users that are the problem, not the people with big new flat panel TVs who want more bandwidth-hogging high definition programming. You see, the high def business is a newer service that the cable folks are milking for more cash, while the folks who download their movies through their internet connections are bypassing the newest toll. So the internet folks must be bad and need to be punished.

The cable company hasn't imposed the download quota on my market yet. I may have to switch to DSL when they do. I'm already paying them way too much, and if they tell me I'm too selfish and must pay more, that would just be too much to take. As it is, my internet access has periods where the service goes out, and some TV channels get choppy on a regular basis. The cable folks have been in the house multiple times, changing wires and such, but it doesn't help. What they won't admit is that they don't have the capacity to reliably deliver what they sell. And that sounds like fraud to me.