Time Warner Cable Tests Data-Usage Rate Structure

[Capper]

NEW YORK — Time Warner Cable will experiment with a new pricing structure for high-speed Internet access later this year, charging customers based on how much data they download, a company spokesman said Wednesday.
The company, the second-largest cable provider in the United States, will start a trial in Beaumont, Texas, in which it will sell new Internet customers tiered levels of service based on how much data they download per month, rather than the usual fixed-price packages with unlimited downloads.
Company spokesman Alex Dudley said the trial was aimed at improving the network performance by making it more costly for heavy users of large downloads.
Dudley said that a small group of super-heavy users of downloads, around 5 percent of the customer base, can account for up to 50 percent of network capacity.
Dudley said he did not know what the pricing tiers would be nor the download limits. He said the heavy users were likely using the network to download large amounts of video, most likely in high definition.
It was not clear when exactly the trial would begin, but Dudley said it would likely be around the second quarter.
The tiered pricing would only affect new customers in Beaumont, not existing ones.
Time Warner Cable is a subsidiary of Time Warner Inc., the world's largest media company.

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[azianai]

one of the rare times im happy on cablevision. If it came down to it, off to FiOS i go

[Jokerswild]

Just another reason to go to DSL when that happens.

[screwballl]

I would never go to a "per usage" rate....

[Quakindude]

Originally Posted by Jokerswild

Just another reason to go to DSL when that happens.

Until they do it as well.

I can see this getting all screwed up. I see the reasoning behind it, but in case their marketing dept haven't figured it out yet, Time Warner will lose more money by limiting what has historically been unlimited than by just canceling these people's accounts that like transfer a hundred gigs of BS a month.

I'm no fan of the folks that constantly U/L and D/L huge files, they suck up my cable bandwidth, but sheeesh. WTF is TW thinking?

[halutzparilla]

i'm screwed if dsl and fios starts doing that...

[Pete]

If Time Warner start doing that here, I'm switching to DSL.

[Zambini]

if TW does that, then Darwin will be smiling in his grave.

[azianai]

I know here for Cablevision they still have caps on your speed during peak ours, and will limit you permanently (without tellin you) in which you got to call them and complain (normal is 15 MBits down/2 MBits up. But they offer for 15 dollars more "optimum boost" which is suppose to be 30 MBits down/5 MBits up.