Each year around January, the world waits in anticipation to see what big electronics companies have in store for the coming months in terms of the latest in computers, gadgets and home entertainment.  The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is akin to “Disney Land” for all gadget aficionados with  a handful of new solutions grabbing a predominate portion of the media’s attention.  This year the buzz centers on Google’s Nexus One, a new smart phone deemed by many as the “iPhone Killer” (doubtful it will knock iPhone off its perch – but we shall see).  Flying a bit under the radar at this year’s show yet gaining tremendous traction in the real-world marketplace are solutions for blending the Internet with television.

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Regardless of the FCC’s final outcome on network neutrality some form of usage-based billing may not be such a bad thing.

For example, as a result of being situated next to one of the world’s largest fresh water lakes, the city of Chicago offers an un-metered water service and flat-rate billing based upon the size of your house.
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Let’s make transparency meaningful.

Even though you can hazard a guess when you’ve walked a mile or poured a pint, there’s definitely something abstract about downloading a gig for most people. Take the case of a man who was billed $66,000 dollars by his service provider for downloading what amounted to three movies?  “I would leave my PC on all night, believing that all traffic was included,” he noted. Clearly this guy thought he was on an “all you can eat” bandwidth plan when it actually included 600 megabytes per month and every additional kilobyte cost another 2 cents. Sure this is an extremely rare and sensationalized case but brings up a valid question – where do we draw the line on assuming we are dealing with informed consumers when it comes to broadband?  Should the average consumer need to understand the difference between a kilobyte and a gigabyte?

The fact is that most folks understand the quality of their broadband experience in a very application specific way.  Quality is not about bits and bytes, it’s about clear phone calls, lively online gaming, sharp video and yes, speedy downloads.  There’s an excellent opportunity for broadband providers to communicate the value of their monthly package tiers by breaking them down into easily digestible measurements in language everyone can understand. For example: a 100-gigabyte data tier would be suitable for subscribers that send out 20 million e-mails, or upload 10,000 photos or download 50 movies or 25,000 songs. Amazing what 100-gigabytes offers!

In the end, most consumers will be most satisfied when their service provider sends them a monthly bill that helps them understand their individual online usage patterns and gives them the opportunity to move to the plan that best meets their needs.   Most of us can look to the voice plans we have for our mobile phone to know that its not all that far fetched of a dream.