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Time Warner Cable tries metering Internet use
Monday June 2, 5:37 pm ET
By Peter Svensson, AP Technology Writer
Time Warner Cable starts customer trial with metered Internet access in Texas

NEW YORK (AP) -- You're used to paying extra if you use up your cell phone minutes, but will you be willing to pay extra if your home computer goes over its Internet allowance?

Time Warner Cable Inc. customers -- and, later, others -- may have to, if the company's test of metered Internet access is successful.

On Thursday, new Time Warner Cable Internet subscribers in Beaumont, Texas, will have monthly allowances for the amount of data they upload and download. Those who go over will be charged $1 per gigabyte, a Time Warner Cable executive told the Associated Press.

Metered billing is an attempt to deal fairly with Internet usage, which is very uneven among Time Warner Cable's subscribers, said Kevin Leddy, Time Warner Cable's executive vice president of advanced technology.

Just 5 percent of the company's subscribers take up half of the capacity on local cable lines, Leddy said. Other cable Internet service providers report a similar distribution.

"We think it's the fairest way to finance the needed investment in the infrastructure," Leddy said.

Metered usage is common overseas, and other U.S. cable providers are looking at ways to rein in heavy users. Most have download caps, but some keep the caps secret so as not to alarm the majority of users, who come nowhere close to the limits. Time Warner Cable appears to be the first major ISP to charge for going over the limit: Other companies warn, then suspend, those who go over.

Phone companies are less concerned about congestion and are unlikely to impose metered usage on DSL customers, because their networks are structured differently.

Time Warner Cable had said in January that it was planning to conduct the trial in Beaumont, but did not give any details. On Monday, Leddy said its tiers will range from $29.95 a month for relatively slow service at 768 kilobits per second and a 5-gigabyte monthly cap to $54.90 per month for fast downloads at 15 megabits per second and a 40-gigabyte cap. Those prices cover the Internet portion of subscription bundles that include video or phone services. Both downloads and uploads will count toward the monthly cap.

A possible stumbling block for Time Warner Cable is that customers have had little reason so far to pay attention to how much they download from the Internet, or know much traffic makes up a gigabyte. That uncertainty could scare off new subscribers.

Those who mainly do Web surfing or e-mail have little reason to pay attention to the traffic caps: a gigabyte is about 3,000 Web pages, or 15,000 e-mails without attachments. But those who download movies or TV shows will want to pay attention. A standard-definition movie can take up 1.5 gigabytes, and a high-definition movie can be 6 to 8 gigabytes.

Time Warner Cable subscribers will be able to check out their data consumption on a "gas gauge" on the company's Web page.

The company won't apply the gigabyte surcharges for the first two months. It has 90,000 customers in the trial area, but only new subscribers will be part of the trial.

Billing by the hour was common for dial-up service in the U.S. until AOL introduced an unlimited-usage plan in 1996. Flat-rate, unlimited-usage plans have been credited with encouraging consumer Internet use by making billing easy to understand.

"The metered Internet has been tried and tested and rejected by the consumers overwhelmingly since the days of AOL," information-technology consultant George Ou told the Federal Communications Commission at a hearing on ISP practices in April.

Metered billing could also put a crimp in the plans of services like Apple Inc.'s iTunes that use the Internet to deliver video. DVD-by-mail pioneer Netflix Inc. just launched a TV set-top box that receives an unlimited stream of Internet video for as little as $8.99 per month.

Comcast Corp., the country's largest cable company, has suggested that it may cap usage at 250 gigabytes per month. Bend Cable Communications in Bend, Ore., used to have multitier bandwidth allowances, like the ones Time Warner Cable will test, but it abandoned them in favor of an across-the-board 100-gigabyte cap. Bend charges $1.50 per extra gigabyte consumed in a month.

Cheap bastards!

I have Time Warner now and everytime I've had a problem with something(bill,cable out) I'm always on the phone for at least 30 minutes before someone answers. Charging extra to be on the internet for extra time sounds lame. I'll probably switch to ATT when my contract is up.

I don't like the sound of this at all.

Other issues are the reasons that we got rid of cable years ago. Despite their claims, they will never even compete with standard DSL speeds. They have limited bandwidth built-in. When everyone in the neighborhood is online, the connectivity drops significantly!

I have never had connectivity problems with DSL and now with FiOS, I smoke the web.

Poor bastards that use Time Warner (or any cable service) for their entertainment needs. Cable is so far behind the curve, it's laughable.

Time Warner blows....they bought my cable provider and I went from second worst cable company to the worst with the switch.

Didn't dial-up do this for years before High-speed internet came out?

Some did, but they almost always had varying levels of usage. Personally, even when the internet available to the public was only dial-up, my plan allowed unlimited usage. Of course, I was using 56k when others were using 14.4 or 28.8 to access the web.

I think I still (a couple years ago) had the floppies for the Flashnet (using Windows 3.1) when I lived in Fort Worthless. None of the computers in the house even has a floppy in it anymore.

AOL used to charge based on usage before they went to flat rates. And, I believe it was billed as a phone call...because my Mother almost had a heart attack opening the bill one month.

I've never subscribed to Time Warner, and I don't even fit the profile of someone they'd target, but even still...


This kinda thing sucks for everybody eventually. If they get away with monitoring/charging high-volume users, it's only a matter of time before they find a way to get everyone else.

It's one of the uglier and baser of The "Seven Deadlies"- greed. I've seen so many instances of it my life, I now find the whole concept boring.

If folks have any onions, they'll leave in droves, teaching these guys a lesson in good bidniss: "DON'T P__ OFF THE CLIENT."

I hope this thing backfires on them and they lose their subscriber base.

Really, when you think about it, it's suprising that it hasn't come up more often than it has.


Hey- weren't these the same guys who screwed a bunch of their cable TV subscribers who ordered NFLNetwork, and didn't get games... because they had some beef with the NFL?

Time Warner is deff the true evil empire. I hate them and they are the sole reason I am now using a dish and AT&T DSL. Their customer service is a joke and I always had issues with my digital cable when they were our provider when Comcast was bought.

But, I will say this, my cable internet never went out. Well, one time b/c someone in PA cut a fiber optic line and it was out for 3 days. Thats it.

In a way this could work out for someone who maybe goes online to check their mail everyday or every other day for that matter. But for people like us on here who come online everyday to BS on a MB or do stuff for school this may hurt a little. I don't think it's a big deal as long as their is some kind of cap so it doesn't get like AOL used to back in the day (or Q-Link if people with the Commodore had that lol). I got grounded a few times for racking up $200+ bills

Wow. The DSL providers have got to be LOVING this business proposition by Time Warner. I've been on DSL for years, so it doesn't bother me at all but for those with no choice that would really suck.

This will be interesting to watch to see if TW makes this common for everyone. I stream stock quotes into the house, but no idea if this is using alot of gigabytes or not.

Question - anyone know of a software that will track your usage? I'm really curious to see if the stock quotes are heavy or not on the usage thing. I might be in that 5% and not even know it.

heh.. stock quotes are next to nothing.. unless you are downloading lots of music and movies you will be fine... for the people that do lots of bit torrents and "illegal downloading" it is problematic. TWC can burn in hell for taking way NFL network... not to mention this crap.

DSL absolutely sucks in my area...otherwise I might have been going through them. The FASTEST I could get would be 768Kb...where with cable I am consistantly over 6Mb. And when I have to do a lot of work through the internet...bandwidth was vital. I do not experience many fluctuations in my bandwidth with cable and aside from this article I have not had much to complain about from my cable internet.

However I did not, nor do not, want cable TV. I have 100% digital satelite. However in order to get a better deal on my internet....I had to get basic cable as well as the internet as it was cheaper than internet alone. So I have BOTH Satelite and Cable and I am constantly getting calls from both to switch....

The problem in my area is that while there is supposed to be competition for different cable companies and such....there isn't...so unfortunately for me when Fiber optic is available....FIOS may not be an option in my area. I will probably have to go to ATT U-Verse. Which is not Fiber Optic allthe way to the home. It is still substantially better than Cable as it works over an IP. So I can wire my house with Cat 5 and it will run through it....and it still has excellent bandwidth that is "constant" and not shared. I would still prefer FIOS which has the Fiber Optic to the home...But we shall see. Neither is available yet to my home....And it looks like UVerse will be the first to become so.

Anarchy, I had DSL at work and I gotta say, it was slow compared to my Time Warner Roadrunner here at home.. But that was a while ago.

And here in Ohio, the Dish is really a problem most times because of the weather we have here. Most of my neighbors have switched back to Time Warner..

Now, if any of you have been paying any attention, you know I HATE Time Warner.. But at this moment, they are the best alternative.

In Ohio, State Senate Bill 117 was passed a short while ago and signed into law by the Gov.. It allows for competition between Cable companies.

Sooner or later, we will have more cable companies competing with Time Warner and Comcast. The hope is that when that happens, we will see lower prices, increase in service options and quicker response times.

I have no idea if it will work out that way, but that's the plan anyway.

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I have never had connectivity problems with DSL and now with FiOS, I smoke the web.

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What is FiOS

Never mind,, FiOS is verizons Fiber Optic stuff... pretty cool site they have by the way..

I have a friend who lives in the boondocks in western Virginia; he has Hughes, and I believe that they limit the amount of data you can download per month already.

That's because only so much data can pass over the string between the 2 soup cans.

I'm waiting for GM to come in here and talk about his days ... where they would fly a passenger pigeon between two computers.

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Poor bastards that use Time Warner (or any cable service) for their entertainment needs. Cable is so far behind the curve, it's laughable.

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I have no problem with time warner internet. I dont do anything fancy online and I am no where near a computer geek.

only 25 HD channels, no NFLN or big10, yep that does suck royally.

A huge plus is, free HD DVR. Do satellite companies rent HD DVR's? Ithink with direct tv you can inly buy for $200 or so. I would rather have a dropoff in HD channels to have HD DVR. Thats just me.

I say go ahead with this extra billing for internet usage (5% of users use half the bandwidth) and include more HD channels.

Once they switch to all digital on February next year, the cable companies can drop their analog channel lineup, and that will free up alot more bandwidth for more digital and HD channels.

That's pretty interesting, this sort of the reminds me of VOIP type charges but just a little different.