Data was first sent down a phone line during the second world war. In the 1950s and 60s, the military and universities already had modems connecting computers together. Bulletin board systems were (in theory at least) available to everyone with business or home computers by the early eighties. However, they were slow and (at least in the UK) stupidly expensive to use.

By the mid-nineties 56k modems were increasingly common. 56k was a theoretical maximum, often one was lucky to get half of that. At least for text, the web was becoming somewhat useful, annoying still, but useful.

However, the web only really becomes ubiquitous with broadband. The web works best when you don't have to watch the clock and you don't have to worry about the quantity of bits coming through the pipe.

Would social networking sites work if we had to count bits? Shall I be your friend on Facebook, well if you make 500 updates a year and it costs me 1p for each, is hearing about your dog's toothache worth £5 per year? Is signing up to this blog's RSS feed worth 50p per year? I would leave a comment on this article but I have been online for 58 minutes already and I am not sure I will make it. Video and audio would certainly not work in a bit counting world.

One of the problems of the wired Internet was that for a long time ISPs sold services they could not deliver. An ISP might sell you 1M/s broadband, however if more than a small proportion of the customers actually used 1M/s, then the network would grind to a halt.

A kettle uses up to 2500 Watts. Tonight England is playing in the Football World Cup, at half time, millions of Britons will put the kettle on during the same 15 minutes. Does the electricity supply stop? No it doesn't. If I put my kettle on, does it stop other houses in the street from using electricity? Of course not. Electricity suppliers do not suspend accounts for breaching 'fair use'. What a stupid phrase, we are going to sell you X, but it is only 'fair' if you use X/Y.

Why this scandalous nonsense was never outlawed I don't know. However, my point is that by 2010, at least where I am, now we can just use the wired internet with confidence and not care about counting minutes or bits.

Whenever an organisation loses track of its core purpose then it has entered a downward spiral. When the kernel is removed, all you are left with is a shell. When the fire goes out, you are left with ash. (insert your own metaphor here.)

The role of an Internet Service Provider is to provide a pipe; customers send requests down it to remote computers and receive responses back along the pipe. An ISP should provide great customer service (i.e. responding to blockages in the pipe), but otherwise they should just get out of the way.

Whenever an ISP tries to do something different, for example provide their own content/advertising/tracking systems/censorship/etc then they just run up costs and put off customers.

So now we get to 3G. This is not the first time phone companies have tried to deliver mobile broadband. In the 1990s they offered WAP, where they promised the web but delivered a poor approximation of Teletext. Instead of giving the people what they want, they tried to give people what the phone companies decided they wanted. It failed miserably. For more on this read Why WAP was crap.

When you turn on the shower, a man from the water company does not get into the shower with you. When you flush the loo, a man from the water company does not wipe your bum for you.

With 3G, phone companies are becoming ISPs. Being an ISP is being a utility, as I mentioned above, you provide the pipe and let people get on with their lives. It is not sexy, it does not lead to excess profits, but the future of 3G is to be another pipe for bits. It will only be ubiquitous when we can use our 3G cards and devices without caring about how many gigabytes we download.

If a company is promoting a service as unlimited, then it should be unlimited. Unlimited followed by a disclaimer is not unlimited. Companies need to stop lying and stop selling bandwidth that they have not got. One day we will have a true unlimited service, until then don't call it that.

Mobile Devices need to be better at measuring usage, and the user should be able to set the device to stop working once it reaches the ISP's arbitrary cap. Regulations also need to be tightened up so that overuse is charged at a sensible rate. Paying £5 for the first GB and then £15, £30 or more for subsequent GBs makes no sense. Tricking people into hefty charges is not a fair way to treat customers.

The mobile phone company 02 sold iPhones and service plans on the basis that subscribers would receive 'unlimited downloads', people invested in the expensive device on that basis. Now 02 found that its network cannot cope and has switched to reverse gear. (for more see the BBC report).

It is about time that we as customers put an end to all this nonsense. The way to do that is by providing better information. It is about time that we had a customer's charter detailing what is fair and what is not fair, and an independent website auditing service plans against the charter. Then as customers our responsibility is to vote with our feet, punishing companies that do not comply.

What do you think? Are Mobile Internet plans fair? Is there something regulators should be doing? What would be a fair mobile Internet plan?