Bandwidth

[Suchy]

How does the amount of bandwidth affect ISP's and hosting companies making them to limit ones amount of bandwidth (ex. 5GB per month...)

Does high amounts of traffic mess up their cables or something like that ?

[PrntRhd]

It really is not that simple.
The reason some ISPs "cap" a service is to prevent some users who use huge amounts from degrading others' service on the local node.
Also the ISPs want you to buy "business class" services if you plan to run servers (at a higher price than the residential plans). Caps on residential accounts helps make certain you won't run servers on the cheaper packages.