> “Consider the set of people such that they need more bandwidth than is available in the pre-existing copper/fiber cabeling to the premises."

Close. I'm saying 'Considering the set of people that need more bandwidth than is available regardless of the pre-existing infrastructure.

It's a subtle difference, but it matters. Your next point is a good example of why :

> Here in Austin, we have 8x4 DOCSIS3 to the building. That’s about 340MBit/s down.

Pause here, this is a faulty assumption. Yes, your buildings line is capable of 340Mbit/s down. But your line is (probably) never maxed out like that.

For a provider to offer you 340Mb dedicated to your building, they'd have to pay for a dedicated 340mb to your building. I don't know the prices in Austin, but in Urban Michigan, just getting a 200x200mb backhaul connection costs roughly about $2,000 to $2,600/month.

If there are ten units in your building, to let your building share 200x200 would mean your ISP would have to have a backhaul cost of $200 to $260 per unit, just on backhaul alone!

(That doesn't include the cost to have copper in the building, or the cost for the ISP to get that backhaul from their data center to your buildings demark, or the cost to have your traffic routed / shaped nicely, or the cost for a telephone operator to offer you support, ect)

I presume your buildings units are residential; if that's true, there's no way your paying $300 or more per unit for home internet, so your ISP likely can't even afford to provide a 200mbit line to your building. They likely have a line capable of 300+, but with service only capable of around 100mbit at the highest.

That also assumes you can even get all the units to subscribe to the ISP service. Comcast / Charter / Time Warner / ect can make that assumption because they have a monopoly. But any players smaller than them, can't make that assumption. We might only get 20-50% of the units in a building to switch, which (if we're still delivering 200mb to the building) doubles the per-unit expenses to about $400/month each.

Remember, your not just sharing the line, your also sharing the backhaul (the ISP's connection to the internet at large).

>This seems absurd to me, to the point of being unbelievable..., connecting an arbitrary business to a fully-connected residential network will always be cheaper than connecting an arbitrary residence to a fully-connected business network.

This might in theory be true if you have a government blessed monopoly. (Even then, the margins on business service are much higher and cover the lower margins on residential)

But if your ISP is any smaller than Comcast, you probably don't have this. So you won't get every house in a residential area. Which means you'll be paying for a fully-connected residential network, but only collecting revenue on 20-50% of those houses. Which means you'll be paying for lines connected to hundreds of homes which you collect zero revenue on. (Remember, each foot of that network is 33cents, regardless if it's in use, regardless of whether you've subscribed service on it).

Businesses subsidize residential use. The degree to which that happens fluctuates wildly (Comcast for instance, can also use high-margin HBO and TV / pay-per-view / other subscriptions to subsidize their residential costs. "Pure ISPs" cant do that).

> Can I run an HTTP server? I have no idea. Can I use 2TB a month? No clue.

If you don't understand the agreement you signed, call your cable company. They will very clearly tell you "no" and suggest you buy a business class service (which should spell out the extra restrictions you've removed -- or at least, Comcast Business Class does here)

> if you think being "clear" and "fair" is standard business practice for ISPs in the United States you need a real reality check.

We're arguing two different things here. Your saying "my ISP is evil, they use X, Y, Z to do evil, therefore, X, Y, and Z are evil"

I get that. I'm not defending Comcast / AT&T / other shitty ISP's. I'm fully aware that Comcast crazy oversells backhaul in many markets, or is super overzealous on what they allow home users to do. (I live with this reality every day -- Comcast is the only ISP at my home).

But those things aren't evil because Comcast / AT&T use them for evil. If Comcast hops into an fast car and hits a bunch of pedistrians, that doesn't make "fast cars" evil. It makes Comcast evil.

Bandwidth caps aren't inherently evil, they're a useful way for low-volume users to save cash on their connection. Shared connections aren't inherently evil, they're a useful way for home users to get faster burst speeds that they normally couldn't afford.

Does Comcast use those restrictions to do evil things? Absolutely. Does Comcast lie about their restrictions, or purposly mislead folks around them. Certainly. Should ISP's be infinitely more transparent about their pricing and services? Absolutely! (and some already are).

Should we abolish these things just because Comcast uses them for evil? Not at all.