As the Internet grows, so does the demand for bandwidth. A gigabyte of transfer was astronomical ten years ago, but you can burn that by watching a single movie through Netflix these days. This has put a lot of pressure on ISPs to deliver bandwidth reliably, and they have responded in many different ways. The Comcast fiasco is still up in the air, which ultimately resulted in them implementing (or rather admitting to and then enforcing) a 250GB per month cap on the majority of their customers. Many other ISPs also practice this, with varying caps. Now, another large U.S. ISP may follow suit. This time around, it is Verizon.
Verizon has stated recently that they see a radical change in pricing structure for Internet services down the road, one that may introduce metered bandwidth – presumably based primarily on how much someone downloads per month. Rather than selling strictly on speed, Verizon mentions they may switch to a point where they are selling "packages of bytes". This statement came along with some apparent disdain for the FCC, which shows Verizon's concern over how the agency is seeking to become involved in monitoring Internet service in the U.S.
While bandwidth caps may seem harsh to those who currently have unrestricted ISPs, the practice is very common around the world. Though it originated amongst ISPs with limited resources available (Satellite and Cellular come to mind), it is spreading to the largest of networks, such as cable and DSL. Even if it's not what people want to hear, it might be a plain truth that all large ISPs may move down the path of metered bandwidth.