I've often wondered if some metered cable internet companies see 4k bandwidth increases coming and are planning on the overages.

I used to have one metered internet provider whose network crumbled when kids would be out of school and use would go up. I wonder if they mismanaged their finances or something to get into this state.

Sadly, more efficient codecs aren't going to decrease bandwidth enough.

I noticed that Xfinity, when you use a rented modem from them, will remove the cap for a small extra fee.

Cox will remove the cap $50/m. You end paying $150/m with all the fees for 200mb/s uncapped or $200/m for 1gb/s.

Av1 codec the content providers are pushing is 25% more efficient than VP9 in terms of bandwidth. Most people could stream 4K for and stay under the caps with the codec change.

Yes, I was extremely annoyed when Netflix gave me a month of "free upgrade" to 4k with no way to remove it or force HD streaming short of cancelling the account.