Time Warner Cable is going to start metering subscribers for their internet usage and charging users who go over their allotted gigabytes, reports the AP. The initial test of this new billing system will be tested in Texas starting Thursday. Time Warner says it will affect very few users, as five percent of subscribers take up half of the cable line capacity. It's an effort to make things more fair for the 95% of subscribers who aren't doing huge uploads and downloads (although those numbers may change as film downloads become more popular with the new services now in the works).
A few other companies are considering metering, so this may be the future of internet access. Does anyone in Europe or from the old days in the U.S. have any thoughts about metering? Is it a step forward in making internet access more fair?
Reader Comments ( Page 1 of 1)
1. What will be the allowed amount? Like they don't make enough money to keep adding extra charges.. Oh wait, it's the gas prices...
nitza417 at 12:00PM on Jun 3rd 2008
2. Is there a bandwidth shortage? Are we running out of Internet? Is it a dwindling commodity?
Or is Time Warner looking for a way to make more money?
Captain Negative at 3:49PM on Jun 3rd 2008
3. If you think this is a ripoff, wait till Barrack takes office. Everyone, except for the party apparatus, must be made equally miserable.
Dave at 10:56PM on Jun 3rd 2008
4. This is just a way for Time Warner to make a bunch of money. I think that Congress should pass a law that says if more than 20% of their users of this 5GB plan go over their allotted amount more than one month..... that Time Warner has to X10 the amount of bandwidth for their lowest cost plan and X5 the amount on their highest plan.
Christopher at 9:37AM on Jun 5th 2008