I've given this some thought over the past few months and compiled a list of 35 points.
I'm going to feed them out in this thread, one or two a day for discussion.
1. Use more
We often compare our selves to Australia and the data caps they have.
This graph, above, shows the average usage in Australia over the past decade. As you can see, on average they didn't even use 10Gb a month in 2010.
Being able to get TB sized plans is based on the ISP having a balance of high and low usage customers. They hope they sell a good data package to everyone, but also hope that many of their users won't use much of that capacity.
As a VERY simple rule in the internet space, if EVERYONE uses more then we all get more.
So you simply need to use more to bring prices down.
2. Cause others to use more
However, if the 0.0001% of users reading this thread just hammer out their connection as much as you can, downloading Linux ISO's from the US, that's not going to help.
We need to get focused on getting every user using more capacity and making more use of their internet connections. That means engaging your mum to make more use of her net every week and actually using up her data cap.
In my home we do that by sending photos of our child to my parents, who often then forward them to other family members. We target things we know they'll be interested in. We don't reduce the size of photos, we just send 1 per email and send more emails.
3. Create more content every single day
We have to get focused on making more content to share with others if we want to get more content for ourselves.
Did you learn 'it's better to give than receive'?
Make sure that at least 20% of your data cap each month is upload and you give your providers something to sell back to peering partners over seas.
Become a content producer. Use you mobile phone to make video clips and put them on YouTube, don't just sit there watching other peoples content. Make some, share New Zealand with the world!
Don't just steal other peoples content and share that. Share your own creativity.
4. User more all the time - not just in huge spikes.
If you look at ISP traffic graphs there are always spikes in them. Figure out how to move your data in the down times.
Sort your computers out to download their windows updates in the off peek times. Upload your back ups through the whole day and not just in one hit at the 7pm when you suddenly think it's time to back up your laptop.
Keep a constant load on your connection and get everyone you know doing the same.
5. Use more when others are not.
p2p applications are great for doing this. Consider setting up your family to move those backups and photos using p2p in the off peak times. Start to be more creative about how you use your connection. Don't just burst it at dinner time. Don't just use email to move a photo. Figure out how you can schedule sending, use tools like dropbox, education your family how to use tools like drop box to fill up that family photos album.
6. Stop using the PSTN!
Orcon, VXF, 2Talk - VoIP exists and it's now consumer friendly. Get busy and use it!!!
The sooner we stop spending our cash on the PSTN the sooner the telcos and carriers will do much more to drive more value in to data products to attempt to capture more of our coin.
PSTN makes huge profits! Stop spending your money on it and put it into more data.
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