For another thing, it is a mistake to suppose that the average user will base his or her demand for service on charges for use of the available bandwidth. Finally, the article cites spikes that are frequent and last a fraction of a second. They must be really, really frequent for the user to notice them without specialized electronic equipment. My impression is that the server addressed gets swamped long before the transmission lines do. As for the answer, it is provided in the article.
Users tend to avoid delays by trying later or by timing their access to periods of low usage.
This is called smoothing, and it happens automatically. Any change in pricing will most likely evolve as a result of environmental pressures, not as a result of anyone's concept of what would be nice. Though billing per byte sounds satisfyingly simple, the nature of the World Wide Web in particular makes this problematic. Perhaps a picture is worth only 10 words on the Internet. Calif. It's easy for the researchers to suggest that users are to blame for Internet congestion and should be charged according to the data they use.