Time Warner to charge customers by bandwidth used
 

I guess we all expect this to happen sooner or later.

Time Warner Cable: Use More, Pay More – Accept It

Time Warner is going to test this new business model of internet in some area around US. They will be charging their customers by how much they download. I certainly hope that other internet providers are not going to follow.

Why can't they just upgrade their device or something? To save money, their new model is to cut down their customers!? This just doesn't make sense. I can't see their customers being overjoyed about this. If customers are not happy, that is bad business.

Yay for Verizon, more incentive for customers to switch. Verizon needs to expand more though.

I know that AT&T also doing the same exact thing if you go over your bandwidth cap, you get slapped with overage. Charging for bandwidth is a bad idea because people won't be able to use the internet without worrying about how much bandwidth he/she uses. Especially today with legitimate streaming video services like Netflix, Hulu, and downloadable movies you can buy like on iTunes will consume alot of bandwidth in no time.

US Government should consider passing net neutrality now so it will stop the bandwidth caps and traffic shaping nonsense.

Edit: I use Verizon Online DSL.

Haha, lol.
For quite some time this system has been the standart in germany. But since they realized it sucks it has been abolished :p (dunno, maybe there are still some of this sort around, but not that I'd know)
But for UMTS and stuff it's still like this.

this definitely wont work... yay for verizon..

I don't know, it makes good business sense, especially if normal/light users will be paying less...

The majority of their residential consumer base probably only use the internet for an hour max a day, and only to check their emails - I could see them being rather supportive of heavy-load users subsidising their usage ;)

Of course, it sucks for you lot. :p

I got comcast, those f**g**s better not follow Time Warner model of business ^^

Nothing really new for me. The ISP i use already has a system close to that. I get charged my fix amount (80 gigs) and then an extra 2 dollars for every gig over until i reach 20 dollars.

What happens after you pass 100gb?

My data plan on my iPhone have a bandwidth cap too, up to 6GB of bandwidth, but I barely use 1GB of transfer on my AT&T data plan. Most mobile broadband companies such as Verizon Wireless and AT&T for example impose these limits and overage costs alot more than what Time Warner is doing, but then again, you wouldn't be downloading anything on mobile broadband unless it's your only connection.

If you thought Time Warner is worse, satellite internet caps are even worse. HughesNet known for their small bandwidth caps have a cap of 200mb per day (I bet you can use up 200mb easily in one day).

And then little old grandma is left wondering why she got a $500 bill for the month. Broadband killed off the dialer malware worries... ...or so we thought.

Pretty sure Comcast is already doing that, except they're a lot more "generous" with a 250GB cap. I recall there was a shitstorm when it became public.

Time Warner is testing puny 5GB, 10GB, 20GB, 40GB "caps." Makes Comcast look like a 5 star.. lol.

Its free after i hit the 100 g mark. They do advertise unlimited service so they cant cut us off.

Most people rarely will ever use over 250GB unless you bittorrent alot of big files, do 24/7 video streaming, etc.

But, you can use over 40GB easily... For me, I use over 90GB per month on my DSL connection.

AT&T is doing similar things like Time Warner is doing and charging $1 dollar per gb after going over your caps, which depends on what speed tier you on... It seems that Time Warner and AT&T want to drive it's customers away.

Really all this is is time warner not wanting to upgrade their fiber optics. They want to maximize their current lines to accomodate more customers with out really upgrading to fit usage needs. Again this business model doesn't work, especially with American consumerism, just chalk this up to Time Warner getting close to biting the bucket. At least for the majority of Americans speeds are never what their advertised but service is guaranteed, and really since they can't even give the speeds at which they claim their service offers and pretty much regions are monopolized by cable companies all this will do will to alienate customers and turn more people to dsl/fios(when the damn thing actually comes to their region)

I guess the Internet seems to not respond positively to Time Warner's announcement.

Source: DSL Reports

The new policy is totally UNamerican!

just like the UN heyO,

but really as I said before they(time warner) like many cable/dsl companies are just trying to milk their lines without upgrading. This is the reason why telecoms and others won't touch federal money because their afraid of having to expand the quality of their service. This in itself screams to the gamers all around that Onlive is too early for its time, because bandwith throttling will be the end of most streaming sites that depend on traffic their free services draw in.

The *concept* of paying by the gigabyte of transfer doesn't bother me... the heaviest users pay to help maintain the network. Remove the caps, provide a way to self-monitor transfer, and go for it.

Unfortunately, these corporate dweebs play games with "tiered" service, with throttling, with deep packet inspection, and other bits of nonsense.

I'd be fine with paying $/GB ... but leave my damned packets alone and shut the hell up about what ports and protocols I may use.

Hum... I hit 297gb last month, and I don't even know why. On average there are 2 person using the bandwidth and for February, it was 97gb. I'm rather surprised we used almost 3 times as much, hum...

And I barely download much at all.