Everyone knew something like this was coming sooner or later. Today we can all exhale, because Time Warner Cable has taken the first step towards ruining broadband access, specifically for its new customers in Beaumont, Texas, where usage caps will be tested.
Time Warner Cable’s pricing plans for this experiment will charge $29.95 per month for 5GB (download and upload) at a 768 kbps connection, and $54.90 for 40GB at a 15 mbps connection. This trial period will charge an extra $1 per gigabyte over the set limits.
New customers will not be charged for overages for the first two months of the experiment, and will be able to monitor their Web usage by way of a meter made available on Time Warner Cable’s Web site.
This makes broadband access for Time Warner Cable users in Beaumont, Texas virtually the same as accessing the Internet through a mobile phone service, which also charges customers for data consumption limits and charges for overuse.
Clearly, competitors in the Beaumont, Texas area will be licking their chops at the opportunity to steal away disgruntled customers who can find comparable, if not faster speeds with no caps if they switched to another ISP. That is, if they can find other options there. Cable companies have a knack for boxing out competitors from their claimed regions, potentially making it inconvenient, at least, for Time Warner Cable’s customers to switch as they please.
A Time Warner Cable spokesperson explained the experiment by saying, “We think it’s the fairest way to finance the needed investment in the infrastructure.”
Michael Arrington of TechCrunch had this to say about the experiment: “I’m almost never in favor of government intervention of markets, but monopolies are an exception. We need to encourage data usage by consumers, not the opposite. The cable companies are standing in the way of economic growth and innovation. We can’t afford a decade or more of screwing around before trying to fix this. Let’s start now.”
The notion would be easier to stomach if the cap was set (much) higher, but with the cap set so low that regular Web users are bound to be restricted by it there is little reason to cheer this step backwards. It should be hoped that the experiment crumbles in failure, though broadband consumers in other areas under other ISPs should not think themselves immune from these kinds of experiments. Comcast, for one, has expressed interest in similar ventures, though with caps set much higher, at a suggested 250GB per month.
http://gigaom.com/2008/06/02/
time-warner-cable-broadband-tiers-lead-to-fears/
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/02/
going-medieval-time-warner-begins-metered-bandwidth-testing/
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