Time Warner - Metered Internet Service?
Time Warner is testing Internet metering in Beaumont, TX. What is Internet metering, you may ask? Well they are testing capping the amount of data users are allowed to upload & download on a monthly basis. Apparently there will be several tiers, from a base of $29.95/month at a download rate of 768 kilobits per second (kbps) and a cap of 5-gigabits (GBs) per month to a $59.95/monthly service at a 15-GBps rate with a cap of 40-GB’s per month, the former being a fairly slow service with the ladder being a very fast service. But here is the catch, once a user passes the cap per month; they will be charged $1/GB. Sound familiar? Similar to how cells phones use to do with minute usage. How many of us had a huge cell phone monthly bill because we passed the allotted minutes used that month.
But it is difficult to make that correlation, because 1GB sounds like a lot of data. Let me put it to you this way. Streaming video on-line is becoming the norm now-a-days with Apple TV and the new Netflix Roku box, to name a few. But a typical movie downloaded, takes about 6-MG’s of data. So in the base tier, you couldn’t download a movie on-line without going over your cap of 5-GB’s. And this does not include the web pages you surf on-line, emails you send & receive, bills you pay on-line, etc. Can you see how easily a user can surpass the cap and start getting charged $1/GB, on top of the monthly fee of $29.95 (for lowest tier). Downloading video on-line is the future of the Internet and it appears Time Warner is preparing themselves to reap the benefits of that demand. Who knows when others will follow suite with this metered Internet. Only time will tell.
Unlimited bandwidth is the only way to go. I am sympathetic to ISPs but big ones like Time-Warner will offer video-on-demand services as a growing slice of their revenue stream. They should expect huge quantities of traffic!
I was in Australia in February and was SHOCKED by the fact that Internet users are accustomed to paying extra for more than casual browsing. Even Skype costs a bunch extra down under!