Time Warner Cable to Test Out Broadband 'Consumption-Based Billing'

Spokesman says something must be done to address that pesky 5% of subscribers who consume more than 50% of network capacity.

Yesterday a memo was leaked by an individual in the Broadband Reports forum whereby it was stated that Time Warner Cable's Road Runner broadband Internet service would soon begin "changing its pricing model."

"They will begin moving away from 'all you can eat' to a pay per byte system," wrote a person with the alias Saber 11. They are calling it "Consumption based billing"

This new method of billing will be first tested out in Beaumont, TX, where I guess maybe they're a bit more laid back and file-sharing or data transfer isn't so high on a person's list of priorities in life. Time Warner is also apparently kind enough to begin work on a website where customers can track their usage and make timely decisions on whether to shut down BitTorrent usage for the month I presume.

"This system will begin be tested in Beaumont, TX in Quarter 1 and apply
only to New customers, eventually all customers will be included in the
new scheme," he continues. "There will be a cap, but I have not heard what that will be and how generous or limited it will be."

A spokesperson for Time Warner Cable then confirmed this plan for consumption-based billing this morning in a local Beaumont paper. According to a telephone interview conducted by a reporter for the Beaumont Enterprise, Time Warner spokesman Alex Dudley said it will indeed begin a trial phase offering a "menu of service with varying price levels for new customers."

"Once the trial is done, Time Warner could decide to roll out a menu of services for all customers," he continued.

The plan seems totally ridiculous in my opinion. If a company offers a particularly fast connection speed - say 1MB/s DL and 75kB/s UL- why on Earth would you need it to browse the internet? It's a dirty little secret that the people paying for these ever faster connection speeds, and thereby network upgrades, are people who use P2P and file-sharing services. First customers would have to pay for speed, then for how long they use that speed? It's insane. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.

It's not the YouTubers, the MySpacers, or the Facebook fanatics out there, it's we the P2P crowd who have created the demand for these high speed packages and it's ironic that we're now apparently to be targeted for using a purchased product for which the speeds are so dramatically hyped.

If it's bandwidth room on the network they want maybe it's room they should get by customers who do use P2P and file-sharing services choosing to pack up and take their business elsewhere if they can.