Digital Home Thoughts: Enjoy Your Cap! There are Children Starving with Much Worse Caps in the World!

"It goes without saying that America’s Internet infrastructure (and pricing models) can vary wildly from those found in the rest of the world. But let’s not end the comparison with just a throwaway statement like that: How do American ISPs fare against their cross-cultural brethren? Does it get much worse than this… or better?"

Data caps are becoming far more commonplace and will probably remain for a long time to come. With each ISP setting up their own limits, it is expected that comparisons be made between different ISPs and even different countries. While it is interesting to see the limits imposed in different areas of the world, I do not see it as any reason to be relieved, or frustrated about what the limits are in one's own country. With the increasing utility and prevasiveness of the Internet, I think that Internet access should be seen as a basic utility and made available to everyone for as low a cost as possible.

Going beyond the standard usefulness of having Internet access, from accessing and paying your bills online to research about what your city is doing, many companies impose data caps that I find are quite low for what they offer, and can hamper innovation. I also strongly suspect that some caps are in place to protect other forms of revenue, such as cable or satellite television. Regardless, I think that pushing for larger data caps is a good idea. While you may not see a need for it now, it can open up new possibilties that can make life that much more improved in the future. Imagine if the Internet for everyone was still stuck at dial-up speeds!