Is broadband metering really so bad?

[Commentary] This chief executive of a company that makes telecom gear to meter bandwidth was against bandwidth metering before he was for it. But he asks why broadband, unlike most other services we purchase, costs the same regardless of how much we consume? See, we got trouble here in River City -- there's been a fourfold increase in demand over a period in which average supply increased by one or two orders of magnitude. To make matters worse, broadband prices have generally declined over the same period ­ possibly not fast enough to satisfy some. But when coupled with the increase in average speed, the price-per-bit paid by consumers has dropped like a rock. From where does the capital come that is needed to expand broadband capacity further? Even the academics that populate "public interest" organizations lobbying for greater net regulation recognize, at least abstractly, that broadband operators need to earn a profit if they are to continue to invest in infrastructure. Given these circumstances, don't usage-based billing frameworks make sense? Unless consumers are satisfied with underinvestment in capacity or willing (as taxpayers) to foot the bill for additional investment in capacity, some form of usage-based billing structure may be inevitable.