ISP Pricing and Policies

Some ISPs choose to modify flat-rate subscription plans to usage-aware plans to roll part of the P2P incurred costs to the subscribers. One of the reasons for increasing P2P traffic is flat-rated pricing schemes. Subscribers can download as much content as they want while paying the same monthly fee amount for broadband access. Some ISPs believe that usage-aware subscription plans will help them to either reduce P2P traffic or collect payments from the users for downloaded content. Both options will partly help service providers reduce or postpone expenses for additional transit bandwidth capacity and upgrading the infrastructure.

While this approach does pass ISP's bandwidth costs onto P2P users, and would likely limit heavy P2P use, it seems doubtful that subscribers used to unlimited plans will tolerate new pricing.

ISP Pricing and Policies
Pros	Cons
Pay-for-use model passes costs to heavy users	Impacts all subscribers, not just heavy P2P users
No technology investment required	Competitive disadvantage compared to ISPs offering flat-rate pricing