As to metering, that might work if there were competition. But, as has been repeatedly pointed out, there is little or no effective broadband competition in the U.S.
"No capacity" has a similar spectre in the last mile as to that which was recently demonstrating in the Netflix inter-connection choking scandal. Although last mile requires more outlay than "fixing" Netflix, the money is there (currently in outrageous profits).
The major ISP's have had years -- and very significant government subsidies and other favors -- to fix this. They haven't. We need the infrastructure to keep our economy competitive. Time to (re)regulate, and to open the field up to municipal development and competition.
There are a few problems with this. Firstly, very few users are going to cut down peak usage, because it's during primetime that they have the free time and inclination to use the Internet.
Secondly most people don't even know what a GB is. Thirdly, you assume usage-based fees are meant to curb usage rather than drive profits.
> or services would offer a way to cache episodes locally during the night so you can watch them after work.
Since we are basically talking Netflix here, this is never going to fly with the DRM guys.
This is not a technical problem, as you can see, since the desided outcome can be reached, if you are willing to ignore some legal niceties...
I have a feeling they just have more people in the "peak users" category than the "over 300gb" category, so its easier to piss off the smaller group.
With more people cutting the cords, this is only going to get worse -- people come home and watch TV. I personally don't want to pay for a 10 lane highway with 5% utilization 90% of the day just to avoid 2 hours of traffic, so I definitely don't want to pay for internet that guarantees 50 mbps or whatever even during peak hours (if I wanted that I'd lease a line - I just want a cheap connection to the internet). I don't want to pay the ridiculous cost of over engineering. I'd rather see solutions that embrace the reality of that situation.