In Japan, it turns out that the Japanese government heavily regulates the domestic telecom industry. As of this writing, they do not allow ISPs to charge customers according to the amount they use (e.g. “Net Neutrality”).
Guess what? This results in massive traffic jams that result in clogged tubes during peak times:
The country’s Internet backbone is starting to feel the strain of all these broadband connections. Peak traffic on the major domestic Internet exchanges was hitting 158Gbps at the end of last year, according to the Ministry of Information and Communications. [...]
The problem is getting so bad that the government is looking into allowing Internet service providers to charge customers according to the amount of data they send and receive. The change isn’t likely soon but is being mulled for a midterm IT network plan due to be published in the next few years.
More on why net neutrality (a nebulous, ill-defined policy) is a really dumb idea: 1 2 3