In January, we wrote about the trial that Time-Warner Cable was slating for the lucky users in Beaumont, TX: hard bandwidth caps. There wasn't much detail available then, but on Monday TWC dropped information about when and how much.
The trial will begin on Thursday, June 5th. The tiers will range from $29.95 / month for 768 kbps and a 5 GB monthly cap to $54.90 per month for at 15 Mbps and a 40 GB cap. Note that both uploads and downloads count toward the cap.
As the earlier leaked memo stated, this "should" affect the 5% of users that use "over half of the total network bandwidth."
Time Warner Cable subscribers will be able to check out their data consumption on a "gas gauge" on the company's Web page, and the first two months will be penalty-free. After that, each 1 GB overage will cost a user $1.
The thing is, even as broadband providers look into these sorts of metered usage programs, other companies are trying to get us to use more bandwidth. Netflix with its unlimited streaming program, movie rentals from iTunes, and on and on.
You can't have it both ways, guys!
We'll see how this works out, but an example of a past failure is Bend Cable Communications in Bend, OR, which used to have multitier bandwidth allowances. It abandoned them in favor of an all-encompassing 100 GB cap, with $1.50 per GB overage.
Source: By Tech Ex http://technologyexpert.blogspot.com/
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