I agree completely.  But your power meter doesn&#x27;t know what device in your house is using electricity, it just knows you&#x27;re using X amount of electricity.<p>Yes it would be difficult to make a data meter that&#x27;s intentionally blind to where the packets are going to and from, but it&#x27;s not as though the data isn&#x27;t available for intercept a dozen other places on a telco&#x27;s network.  If they want to spy on you and your data is on their network there&#x27;s little you can do.<p>The point of this independently certified metering device is that it&#x27;d be expensive.  Hopefully nobody would sell them, only rent them.  So if a carrier wants to charge overages they&#x27;re more than welcome to, but the people supplying the meters are going to get a huge cut of their business.  And once a telco is on the receiving end of a racket instead of on the giving end, perhaps they&#x27;d change their tune about data caps and spend that money and energy upgrading their network instead of using it to clamp down on their &quot;customers&quot; who have little to no alternatives.