I suppose my preference would be that providers simply build the capacity required to support the advertised bandwidth at 100% utilization. This is similar to what Google Fiber does. They don't care if you use 20GB or 20TB in a month from what I've heard. That sounds optimal in my mind. Underestimating usage and failure to anticipate demand are real issues that major ISPs have to deal with over the long run (off the top of my head AT&T's network problems after the first iPhone was released). I've always viewed these caps as short-term fixes until they figure how to increase their network capacity to support increased use.

> Because at the moment s/he is bearing the cost of abusive users.

There is nothing abusive about using that which you paid for. If you sell me a 100mpbs pipe, I should be able to use that pipe 24/7.

Of course, the reality is that it would be expensive to make sure everyone could use their 100mbps pipe 24/7, so ISPs sensibly over-provision to save money.

But ISPs miscalculating their provisioning requirements (or as it appears in most cases, simply grubbing for money), is not the end-users fault and not the end-users problem and it does not mean that they are doing anything abusive.