If the recent Philippine consumer's outcry against its government's bandwidth cap proposal illustrates anything, it's that users don't want to be told how much bandwidth they can use regardless if they don't even come near any set limits.
This week the Philippines government decided to take out a provision in their national broadband plan that would have enabled the country's service providers to put low daily caps on their respective broadband services.
However, the government quickly realized that the right thing to do is not to penalize consumers, but improve the quality of the broadband connection they get from service providers.
"We are happy to announce that the provision on broadband Internet data caps has been deleted from our draft circular," NTC Deputy Commissioner Jaime Fortes told the Philippine Daily Inquirer. "The provision was counterproductive to increasing Internet usage in the country."
When it comes to bandwidth caps, Philippine consumers aren't alone in their frustration. A similar battle has continued to rage on in the U.S. and Canada as the likes of AT&T (NYSE: T), Bell Canada (NYSE: BCE), Frontier (NYSE: FTR) and Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC-WI) have either trialed or have imposed bandwidth usage caps as part of their monthly broadband service contracts.
For more:
- the Philippine Daily Inquirer has this story
- Broadband DSL Reports has this post
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