kazaktelecom, the monopoly ISP in kazakhstan, sells its internet service with a monthly cap in traffic. one person, for example, told me that the maximum they could get per DSL line was 20 GB per month. internet cafes get around the problem by subscribing to multiple lines and switching from one to the other as each line reaches its monthly max.
but because people pay for what they expect to use and sometimes they expect wrong, that means that sometimes internet access gets a little harder at the end of the month. the business center at the place where we are staying hit their monthly max at around march 29th. the internet cafe we usually go to had to close early on the 31st because they exhausted their monthly traffic allowance in the late afternoon. on wednesday night we wandered around the center of taraz, trying in vain to find a place that we could successfully use skype.
which kind of puts comcast's 2008 decision to impose a cap in perspective. despite fears at the time, i don't think a cap has become a trend among ISPs in the u.s. yet. but if it does, the last few days in those 31 day months could get to be pretty annoying.
