“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,” The Associated Press reports.
“On Thursday, new Time Warner Cable Internet subscribers in Beaumont, Texas, will have monthly allowances for the amount of data they upload and download,” AP reports. “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,” AP reports.
“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,” AP reports.
“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,” AP reports. “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.”
“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,” AP reports.
Full article here.
Will you be willing to pay extra if not just your home computer, but your Apple TV as well, goes over Time Warner Cable’s Internet allowance?