Bandwidth is expensive because it's the total capability that matters not the actual usage.

Bandwidth is measured in bps (bits per second but usually Kbps or Mbps) which stands for kilobits per second or megabits per second. That is the amount of data that can be transferred in one second.

So if you own a data center and you connect two servers up to a T1 line that means that both of those servers now share a total capability of pushing 1.5Mbps (which is about 25% under the standard 1Mbps per machine). So now a usual server will host a couple hunderd websites (or more) so lets say at this given moment 5 customers are uploading new content to their account. Lets say they are each at a different office building and each have 1Mbps lines of their own so now if 5 customers each transfer a file that is 100MB in size (Megabytes**) and the total connection for the two servers they transfer to is only 1.5Mbps, the total of both server can only push is 187.5KB (Kilobytes) a second so it's going to take around 9 minutes for those files to be uploaded. Now granted that this is just an example and those file times are pretty good (most people don't have 1Mbps upstream).

So the moral of the story is: one T1 line really only feeds two servers and you know how much a T1 costs? $400 - $600 per month maybe?

Bandwidth is really expensive but like anything else you get a better deal the more you buy. When the provider buys bandwidth they buy in bulk like a huge datacenter will get an OC-12 which can push (620Mbps) so then they can hookup 620 servers each with their own Mbps second of bandwidth.

And even when you are buying a huge amount of bandwidth you still end up paying $40 (cheap stuff) to $150 (expensive stuff) per Mbps for your bandwidth.

Hope that makes it clear.

**(It takes 8Mbps to move 1MB a second because there is 8bits in one byte)

Also remember that for capabilities like this providers have to run miles and miles of fiber and have all kinds of fancy expensive equipment like catalyst switches, Cisco 7500 series routers, DWDM's, Firewalls, DDoS attack mitigation devices, all levels of network staff, redundant everything, etc.

ahh yeah, thanks

I'd also like to add that hosts offering unlimited resources do not exist, they are plain out lying. Think about it, if you uploaded 80 gigabytes of information to their servers, do you really honestly think they will allow you to? No. Same goes with bandwidth, if you used up a terabyte of bandwidth and crashed the server along with hundreds of other sites on that server, I"m pretty sure your host wouldn't like that.

I am also pretty sure that your host capped the bandwidth to 10gigabytes on your "unlimited plan" so that your site would crash if you ever even attempted to upload and share a ton of files.

Yeah, they have limited my monthly bandwidth to 10GB but they let me have unlimited disk space, they say that if they run out of diskspace on the server they'll just go and add another HD

Well for one yes not unlimited their shared run at about 98% of capacity all the time you would be lucky to get even a gig on their system. The reason behind limiting bandwidth is stop people from uploading downloading large files that kill all the other users. and OneHost.ws is the crapiest server on earth bar none. They totally ignore email and support requests there server is always down if you accidentally delete something then you lost it forever. No I mean absolutely no customer support. Using this service is just asking for trouble.