Time Warner Cable ready to test metered Net use

Some customers of Time Warner Cable in Beaumont, Texas, may soon end up paying more for their Internet access than other customers.

In a test of metered Internet access that's set to begin Thursday, subscribers who go over their limit for uploading and downloading material will be charged $1 per gigabyte, according to an Associated Press story, citing a Time Warner Cable executive.

The trial run for the metered Web use was expected. The company had said in January that it would test the new pricing model in Beaumont as a way to limit the use of peer-to-peer applications on its network. Cable companies and P2P services have long clashed over bandwidth demands, especially for the transfer of large video files.

The tiered pricing will work this way, for the Internet portion of subscription packages that also include phone or video use: At the low end, users will pay $29.95 per month for service at a speed of 768 kilobits per second, with a 5GB monthly cap. At the high end, users will pay $54.90 per month for service at 15 megabits per second, with a 40GB cap.

"We think it's the fairest way to finance the needed investment in the infrastructure," Kevin Leddy, Time Warner Cable's executive vice president of advanced technology, said in Monday's AP story. He said that just 5 percent of the company's subscribers take up half of the capacity on local cable lines.

Time Warner Cable has 90,000 customers in the trial area, but the test pricing structure will affect only new subscribers. The gigabyte surcharges go into effect after the first two months of service.

Reaction to the start of the test was swift--and often harsh.

"Is Time Warner Cable crazy?" writes Stacey Higginbotham at GigaOm, who says she is a customer of the company. "(H)ere's where I question Time Warner Cable's sanity: By offering tiered service at 15 Mbps it's promising me faster speeds that I will have limited opportunity to use, potentially driving me into the arms of another provider. Additionally, the cable guys are in a fight to the death with the telephone companies, who are unlikely to resort to such plans because they don't have the same limitations when delivering last-mile services."

[inachu]

This is all about forcing customers to watch TV instead of TV online.

[expatincebu]

I say start cutting their cables. Make them pay for their greed.

[DannyBoyWon]

**** On Them , That's What the Phone Company's Tried It Died - NoBody is going to Keep Checking to See If They went Over their Gig Limit - Especially In the Light that Half of all the B.S that comes Down Is ( Advertizement ) So Then You wilkl have to Call and Deal with another Customer Serice Bill and Air Heads to Get the Gigs Reduced , because they had
May to Much Advertizement In all of The Worlds Web Pages !
They will Control Content , what's Next - Charge for E-mail
( Drop Dead ) Time Warner !

I Just Canceled My Acct. with Them - They are Pissing People Off ! BYE-BYE

[Tronman161]

5GB limit? I guess those folks in Beaumont won't be downloading many Linux distros....or other large open source/freeware projects.

[xeio]

I'm switching to FIOS if that happens NYC.

[zincmann]

UNACCEPTABLE: You can be sure the moment this "plan" comes to my Metro I will be switching back to DSL. Not smart Time Warner when you already OVER charge me for Cable TV and related services. Time Warners plan (Come to a Metro+Offer Bundled Services+Fry the Local Phone Company=Switch Internet Plans to Pay Per Use). Not right, not fair, vote your choice by cancelling your account if and when it comes to your city.

[jfekendall]

What about a guy like me who does frequent computer work for other people at home? Running Microsoft Updates/downloading drivers on fresh OS installs would totally kill my business. I would have to start charging my friends to work on their PCs! I really hope FiOS is available in this area before Time Warner starts doing this everywhere.

[bluerain44]

Actually, if they offer this in NYC, at the rates above, then I'd be happy to pay $55 a month. However, they probably will offer this at $100 a month to NYC (because NYC is more expensive than the rest of the country, they will justify, or they'll cobble on some stupid fee of 20% and call it a service charge.)

I'm glad we're finally getting FIOS. I don't expect the service to be at all better (remember, Verizon is the phone company), but I expect the competition to at least lower prices.

I'll be happy to be free of these jokers when WiMax comes out.

[fgoldstein]

The 40 GB limit is too low for premium users. Comcast is talking about a 250 GB cap. But setting that detail aside, what they're doing makes sense. I actually have "run the numbers" and while in some big urban areas the cost of Internet capacity is pretty low (some things are cheaper in New York), in outlying areas it can get really expensive. The $1/GB number is realistic, in the middle of the range. So long as people think that Internet usage is "free", they'll do uneconomic things with it. Watching HDTV over the net, across the backbone, is a horrible waste of resources. While it is unpleasant to have metering of a once-unmetered resource, it becomes necessary when the average cost is pushed up substantially, especially if it's pushed up by a small number of very heavy users.

An alternative solution is to block certain protocols or applications. Sound familiar? Yep, it's a terrible idea, but it lets the marketing dweebs say "unlimited use" as long as it's within the bounds of the allowable applications. What TWC is doing is consistent with neutrality principles. Do whatever the hell you want with the packets, but if you use too many, you pay for them. The majority of users will not pay for extra usage.

[jumpjetta]

Wow. So this means I'll be PAYING to download ads, too. While I could be hopeful there'd be a backlash against ads online if people had to pay to download them (much like the bans on junk faxes) I have little doubt this will be another cost consumers are made to swallow.

[jumpjetta]

Also, I kinda wonder about the rollout in Beaumont. That's a pretty tech-neutral place with probably not a lot of activism (pretty much a Bush-Republican stronghold). Perhaps they'll be able to do their little trial, declare it a success due to little backlash, and roll it on to other places as a result. Try that trial in Austin, and you'd have an informed backlash that would actually matter. And yeah, I'll head back to DSL if that reaches Austin.

[NWLB]

I lived in Columbus, Ohio, where most every major player had service, and the price was cheap, the service was fast.

I moved back to Bowling Green, Ohio, where only Time Warner is, and the cost of cable TV is more than twice what I paid, and the internet service is 40% more, and slower.

If they pull a stunt like this in BG, I'm dropping them, and their cable service, getting a dish and DSL, even if its slower.

I play MMO games, use open source projects, I download, upload, and have web project. I won't pay for this kind of highway robbery.

[mcritic]

This is another case of enacting a simple solution for a complex problem, and it is silly, myopic, and poorly conceived in relation to usability and customer service.

This solution is myopic because it attempts to solve a small problem (i.e., P2P bandwidth "abuse") by assuming all customers are guilty of creating the problem. It fails to see that other "legitimate" bandwidth uses are YouTube videos, Web broadcasts, Amazon.com media downloads, as well as even Netflix (and others) on-demand movies. Perhaps it is a political move to herd audiences to more of Time-Warner's non-Web media, but what it will ultimately do if this is enacted nationally is create a mass migration of their customer base to other ISPs that provide unlimited bandwidth.

Just like usability studies for Web sites and customer service studies for support, if something becomes too much of a hassle and too limiting to use by its customer-base, it will become extinct from a lack of use.

[skrubol]

Wow, what a deal.. I think my 768k DSL is $18/mo. I probably average about 10GB/mo on downloads that I keep track of, plus I have no idea how much on normal web usage and day to day downloads.
We switched to DSL not because of the price, but because our $45/mo cable modem was so unreliable. There were outages at least monthly, and horrible slow-downs at least weekly (browsing felt worse than over dial-up.) Granted, that was Comcast and not TWC, but with DSL my speeds are basically always at least 700kbps, and there are outages that I notice (besides my own router needing to be rebooted,) once or twice a year.

[mooney101]

I well NEVER go with a company that does this. Pure BS and anyone who does expect this is an idiot.

[Morale Officer]

This sounds like an act of desperation on the part of TWC. They obviously are going for a short term profit because of future competition eliminating them altogether.

In the meantime their customers will HATE THEM FOR THIS!!!!!!

[k2dave]

I do see the need for some limits, and increasing fees seem to be favorable to the cable companies then slowing the speeds down as is done with satellite service and some high speed cell service, though some cellular services (at least one) for new customers are charging $0.50 per Mb over the 5 Gb limit, I do feel better to know I signed up at the time where they will just reduce the speed once that level is reached. I think upper limits should be imposed, as mistakes happen and customers don't like being hit with a $500 internet bill just because some web page was left running while on vacation or some trojan got onto the system. I think a more consumer friendly way of going about it is to have a tiered rate system, instead of a cost per Gb

[jlovato]

I stopped using cable over 15 years ago. And have been using DSL for over 12 years. The cable companies made promises to communities all over the US to bring the fastest and best service to us all. I guess the question has been answered, ?What is better cable or DSL?? For all of you who are still on cable, bail out and move to DSL or U-Verse now.

[mgarfein]

This strikes me as a fairly foolish model. Unless everyone adapts it.
While I believe in a "datatricity" utility model I'd have to say that the ifrastucture isn't there to make it really useful. I'm thinking something along the lines of 10 cents per gigabet with a flat access fee of $20 bucks to start. As the bandwidth grows it inevitably drops to a nickel or less per GB.

[TomMariner]

Naw -- Let's go the other way! Cable was originally supposed to offset the fact that we were getting charged for television viewing that used to be free by no comercials. Now the cable operators are some of the richest families and companies in the nation because they are getting it from both ends -- money from advertisements and cable rates that are ten times the original Oh, and the no-commercial television, like movies -- that is yet another fee on top of the fee!

So, OK, charge me per usage and keep my speeds below that of third world countries, but stop charging me for the television. Just zero out that part of my bill and let us keep the $trillions we are now charged for broadcast television. And before long we will be back to 19.2 k baud unless we give you our first born, half or our pay before taxes and a promise to bow to you guys when we see you pass. And you can revel in the fact that you got to be some of the richest folks in the world by helping our country get leapfrogged by everyone including Robert Mugabe.