So I was just renewing a contract with a VPN provider, and paid out for a couple years it works out to somewhere under $2/month.
ISPs around me can run from about $50-$150/month
If I’m putting the major bulk of my traffic over a tunnel that could eat up a sizable chunk of a given connection point for the provider that I’m sure costs more than $2/month to maintain. I would have to assume it would take the combined subscriptions of several users to pay for a given node.
So how does that work as a business model? Unless these VPN providers are getting a steal on their connections it’s hard to envision how they can manage to pay their costs without these nodes being absolutely bottlenecked when a few people start streaming some shows.
I’m sure you are far outweighed by users like me who keep one for when traveling away from home and working in public spaces (i do two days a week on average). Most days is no bandwidth and when there is usage its pretty low as limited to the public WiFi so just syncing files for local changes and general internet use / research. I could do and sometimes use a VPN to my home server but I don’t want the risk I can’t work anywhere if something happens.