There's more than a few problems with this particular assessment as it relates to "what we pay" and what kind of service we can expect for that price.

On the cost side, I suspect the cost of support, service and customer acquisition significantly affects the cost/GB. I used to switch between UVerse and Comcast every 6-12 months (the point at which the promotional prices ended) because it was very easy to do so and they didn't have a requirement that I remain for a contractual period of time.

However, even given all of this, "what we pay" is barely related to "what it costs", at least in most of the US. In the majority of markets there is often only one service provider that provides service at speeds in excess of 25Mbps. Sometimes, there is two, but in the state that I live in, the choice is often "Cable Provider" vs "Phone Provider". If you're lucky, your phone provider is AT&T on the newer network (with those giant boxes in each of our subdivisions -- no FIOS here) and they can deliver more than 25Mbps (inbound) and the other is Comcast at up to 100Mbps. Both have caps (unless you are a business subscriber) with AT&Ts at 150GB or 250GB depending on the service and Comcast at 250GB. A small number of areas have an additional cable provider (usually Wide Open West) that offer reasonable speeds and I think WoW doesn't do caps but I'm not sure.

The price you pay from each of these providers will be different depending on how many competing providers exist in the area. AT&T U-Verse at much higher speeds costs less in my house than AT&T U-Verse in my family's cottage up north (it tops out at 12Mbps with 150GB caps).

Until there is competition offering uncapped service (and customer demand for it), it doesn't really matter what the cost is. The folks at these companies charge what they can get away with given the market they're operating in, which in many markets is either an absolute monopoly (me, up north with AT&T) or them sharing the market with a single competitor who is able to deliver faster or slower service than them with identical data caps. The cost for entering a residential market is high, riddled with regulation and practical concerns, and the companies have lobbied hard for restrictive state laws that prohibit municipalities from providing a competing service.

Prior to them setting up this whole "pay for unlimited service" arrangement, I ran afoul of the 250GB cap and immediately switched to Comcast Business. The difference is stark. I had some service done with AT&T that resulted in one of the AT&T guys putting a shovel through the Comcast Business wire at 4:30 in the afternoon. I called them up and they sent someone to my house at 6:30 PM. I also get a special phone number, not open 24-hours, but I rarely talk to more than one person about the problem I'm experiencing and the hold times are minimal. He fixed the service (at no charge -- despite it being a competitor that caused the problem). That was one experience, but I've called support a few times and I've always had my issues addressed quickly. When I was a residential customer, waiting several days for a service call was normal.

I pay more than twice as much as the residential service at $130/mo for the same speeds, but I have no data cap and routinely use 2-3 TB/mo according to my router. I'm on the same wires, using the same company, paying a lot more, and getting no caps, and what I'd characterize as exceptional customer service. This almost irritates me more. It's not an issue of being unable to provide this kind of service to everyone, or an issue of network capacity, it's an issue of being unwilling to provide this kind of service to everyone because the market dictates that they don't need to in order to be (very) profitable.

Now, I suspect that the small businesses that they target this service at probably don't use the kind of bandwidth or have the performance requirements that I do (I'm in the 2-3TB/mo range). My dad's 9-person company was happy with IDSL at 1Mbps bidirectional until two years ago and would probably still be on it if Comcast hadn't wired up the park and undercut the other providers by half, so they're competing for a different kind of customer in small business. And this may bean that the small business market actually has more competition since many are willing to accept slower service offerings as identical products (or maybe the manufacturing non-tech heavy small businesses in my area are just that way).