Time-Warner Considers Per-Gigabyte Service Fee, After iTunes

destinyland writes "Time-Warner is now mulling a plan to charge a per-gigabyte fee for internet service. A leaked memo reveals they're now watching how many gigabytes customers use in a 'consumption-based' pricing experiment in Texas, which we discussed early last month. The announced plan was that they were considering a tier-based approach, as opposed to per-gigabyte fees. 'As few as 5 percent of our customers use 50 percent of the network,' Time-Warner complains, with plans to cap usage at 5-gigabytes, and more expensive pricing plans granting 10-, 20-, and 40-gigabyte quotas. Steven Levy at the Washington post suggests Time-Warner's real aim is to hobble iTunes, raising the cost of a movie download by $10 (or $30 for a high-definition movie). Eyeing Time-Warner's experiment, Comcast cable also says they're evaluating a pay-per-gigabyte model."

Time Warner and Comcast are cordiallly invited...

[mrchaotica]

...to FUCK OFF AND DIE, because I'll go back to fucking dial-up before I pay their ransom!

This is a great idea

[Alzheimers]

As someone who finds the "Dark Ages" romantic and exciting, I think this is a great idea. With the US so far behind the rest of the world already, it's time to just give up competing all together.

And some day, when we do decide to make a come back ... well, everyone loved the first Renaissance. I'm sure we'll do it even better the second time around, because this is the US of Fuckin A!

I'm looking forward to living a 22nd century stone age. Aren't you?

Re:The problem with consolidated multimedia

[Rogerborg]

But should I vote for Tweedle Dum, or Tweedle Dee?

Re:The problem with consolidated multimedia

[SQLGuru]

My vote goes to the Queen of Hearts.....she knows how to take care of dissenters. OFF WITH THEIR HEAD!

Layne

Commercial v. "home" usage / Pro surcharge

[grolaw]

I'm at my office. I use the lowest tier of Time Warner's Business Internet (purportedly 1.5 meg up and down - but usually 600k up according to Speakeasy / DSLReports) for $200/mo. At home, across a state line, I have Time Warner home Internet at ~4.5 down and ~1.3 meg up - at $49.00/mo.

I routinely use VPN contact with my office computer network and I have downloaded 2-3 gig video depo files. I can easily have evidentiary material scanned into tens of .PDF files all in excess of a gig.

  I routinely use video streaming to take Continuing Legal Education courses and those also involve a massive conference call with all of the participants. If I am already paying $250/mo for Internet and $400 + for a Video streamed CLE and I make use of my VPN connections I'm going to be in the top 5% of bandwidth users and it is all 100% legit. How much of a surcharge are these twits planning? A normal month will be dozens if not hundreds of gigs of data. My primary email is through a web hosting company that I negotiated "unlimited" file size with (effectively that "unlimited email is about 600 meg) and posting unencrypted client data to a private server is a massive ethical violation.

Anybody want to guess what PGP does with a 4.2 gig .mov file? Besides the year it takes to encrypt it - most of my clients and most other attorneys simply don't use PGP.

So, what do I do? Buy a ton of Firelite drives and Fedex data? Does this even make sense?

Hell, if I spend any time researching the law on Westlaw and Lexis (not to mention Thomas) I'll download a few gig. EVERY MONTH.

I'm a solo practitioner with an active litigation practice (primarily Federal) and I can't think of a better reason than this new scheme to REGULATE the @#$%^&* out of the access providers.

Re:U.S. falling behind

[Araxen]

then they'll encourage more bandwidth usage and plow some of the new profits back into infrastructure

I bet you fall for Hillary Clinton crying too.