Time Warner Cable tries metering Internet use

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Time Warner Cable tries metering Internet use

Monday June 2, 5:37 pm ET

By Peter Svensson, AP Technology Writer

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Time Warner Cable starts customer trial with metered Internet access in

Texas

NEW YORK (AP) -- 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.

On Thursday, new Time Warner Cable Internet rs in Beaumont, Texas,

will have monthly allowances for the amount of data they upload and download.

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 rs, said Kevin Leddy, Time

Warner Cable's executive vice president of advanced technology.

Just 5 percent of the company's rs take up half of the capacity on

local cable lines, Leddy said. Other cable Internet service providers report

a similar distribution.

" We think it's the fairest way to finance the needed investment in the

infrastructure, " Leddy said.

Metered usage is common overseas, and other U.S. cable providers are looking

at ways to rein in heavy users. Most have download caps, but some keep the

caps secret so as not to alarm the majority of users, who come nowhere close

to the limits. 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.

Phone companies are less concerned about congestion and are unlikely to

impose metered usage on DSL customers, because their networks are structured

differently.

Time Warner Cable had said in January that it was planning to conduct the

trial in Beaumont, but did not give any details. On Monday, 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.

A possible stumbling block for Time Warner Cable is that customers have had

little reason so far to pay attention to how much they download from the

Internet, or know much traffic makes up a gigabyte. That uncertainty could

scare

off new rs.

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.

Time Warner Cable rs will be able to check out their data

consumption on a " gas gauge " on the company's Web page.

The company won't apply the gigabyte surcharges for the first two months. It

has 90,000 customers in the trial area, but only new rs will be

part of the trial.

Billing by the hour was common for dial-up service in the U.S. until AOL

introduced an unlimited-usage plan in 1996. Flat-rate, unlimited-usage plans

have been credited with encouraging consumer Internet use by making billing

easy

to understand.

" The metered Internet has been tried and tested and rejected by the

consumers overwhelmingly since the days of AOL, " information-technology

consultant

George Ou told the Federal Communications Commission at a hearing on ISP

practices in April.

Metered billing could also put a crimp in the plans of services like Apple

Inc.'s iTunes that use the Internet to deliver video. DVD-by-mail pioneer

Netflix Inc. just launched a TV set-top box that receives an unlimited stream

of

Internet video for as little as $8.99 per month.

Comcast Corp., the country's largest cable company, has suggested that it

may cap usage at 250 gigabytes per month. Bend Cable Communications in Bend,

Ore., used to have multitier bandwidth allowances, like the ones Time Warner

Cable will test, but it abandoned them in favor of an across-the-board

100-gigabyte cap. Bend charges $1.50 per extra gigabyte consumed in a month.

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