breathe - which recently took action to suffocate some of its heavy breathers - is calling on the better nature of "Modern Urbanists" to ensure that the service does not choke on overuse.

In the "Dear Customer" (shouldn't that be "Fellow Modern Urbanist"?) email (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/35/12222.html) issued today the ISP justified its decision to expel 500 people from its service.

The company said: "Maintaining a high quality of service is dependent upon your goodwill in continuing to use the service sensibly.

"We will not seek to impose limits per user because this is artificial and not in the spirit of our relationship with you.

"Equally though, this spirit needs to be two-way in that excessive usage affects the ability of everyone on breathe freely to enjoy the service," it said.

But such honesty and openness has also compromised the commercial sensitivity of breathe.

For it is now clear that its whole business model is based on "goodwill" and the understanding that people don't use the service 24/7, even thought that's what they paid for.

With this approach, who needs FRIACO? ®

Related Stories

Heavy breathers winded by Net access rejection (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/1/12173.html)
breathe is such a wheeze (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/12028.html%20target=)
breathe suffers asthma attack (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/11557.html)
Oh to be a Modern Urbanist (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/11556.html%20target=)