Bandwidth "cap"

I recently received an email notifying me that I have exceeded my bandwidth limit (all 400Gigabytes of it) and that I should consider upgrading my service. Unfortunately when I called the representative I have the maximum service tier available so I cannot upgrade despite the email suggestion.

None of the FAQ's, nor the representative I spoke with on the phone, address the issue of exceeding the bandwidth limit on the highest tier service with legitimate bandwidth. The representative attempted to reassure me that these emails are just a notice and that no enforcement is being implemented at this time... So I'm being notified that I've exceeded an arbitrary limit, there's nothing I can do to increase said limit, and nothing happens because I have exceeded said limit. Sounds like a pretty pointless limit, email, and a rather disrespectful waste of my time.

Also, it was implied that the bandwidth from utilizing the COX online backup counts against the monthly bandwidth limit which significantly reduces the value of this service.

What good is having "Unlimited" backup storage (actually 10 terabytes and not unlimited at all) if using it just causes you to exceed your bandwidth limits?

For some perspective:

You can back up 2.5 times the amount of data your are allowed to transfer in a given month.

Assuming you never use the internet for anything else for the entire month:

You can only watch just under 174 hours of Netflix (in HD based on 2.3GB/hour as provided by Netflix [http://support.netflix.com/en/node/87#gsc.tab=0]) per month, which is less than 6 hours per day. Or two devices for 3 hours per day (those with kids really understand the value of being able to watch something different than what their kids are watching).

Since I do not have TV service, nor should I be required to get TV service to record shows as opposed to streaming them on demand, and there are 3 people currently living at this location with a fourth on the way this is an unrealistically low bandwidth cap.

Interesting numbers:

Assuming the 50mbps connection (the maximum available) is running at 25mbps for the entire month that would consume 8100GB of data; yet there is a 400GB cap.

Assuming that the connection is only running at half speed for 6 hours per day, that still consumes 2025GB of bandwidth greatly exceeding the 400GB cap.

So I am paying for speed I am not allowed to use more than 10% of the time that I am paying for it?

The most unfortunate part of this is there are so few service providers available and as such no motivation to improve the situation.

Before posting a comment about operating costs, understand that Cox communications announce $9.4 Billion dollars in revenue for 2011. Now I do understand that is revenue and not gross nor net profit, however that is a considerable sum of money to be able to utilize to insure that you can properly gauge what your are and are not capable of sustaining and selling your product/service accordingly.

If someone could either explain to me what can actually be done increase or remove the bandwidth cap that appears to have no mathematical origin or educate me with facts as to why these limits are in place and make sense that would be swell.

So far it appears that the sole reason for the cap is because the cell phone companies are getting away with charging for consumption as opposed to speed provided AND as a tool to encourage upselling to higher tier service.

TLDR: Arbitrary non-enforced caps = bad. Charging for service that cannot be fully used = bad.