Om Malik is beginning to suspect that “metered broadband” may be less about bad, evil P2P and more about competing video download services.

Stacey crunched the numbers yesterday and came up with an interesting conclusion: If you bought the monthly 15 mbps/40 GB transfer option for about $56 a month, you’d get about 40 hours of standard definition video along with enough bandwidth for your normal browsing and surfing habits. That’s just over 75 minutes of SD Internet video every day – two or three shows at best – which means you might need to continue buying the “video connection” in order to watch more television. Sure you can slice and dice the data transfers with other online activities, but this is all about video.

How close are you to ditching cable and watching all your shows online or through a “Netflix box?” Are you already there? Is cable the new “land line?”

Why Tiered Broadband Is the Enemy of Innovation [GigaOm](Thanks, Henry!)

Want more consumer news? Visit our parent organization, Consumer Reports, for the latest on scams, recalls, and other consumer issues.