Time Warner Reveals Ridiculous Tiered Pricing Test Programme
I never thought I'd say this, but... Time Warner Cable has now made me appreciate Comcast's policies.
Yeah, I felt dirty just typing that. Why my newfound relative warm fuzzies towards Comcast? Time Warner Cable has just announced the details of their tiered internet access test programme (which we wrote about back in January.)
How bad is it? The top tier has you paying $55/month for a measly 40GB of transfer for that month.
Go over those 40GB, and you pay $1 for every single GB after.
The bottom tier? $30 for 5GB a month, at a pathetic 768Kbps.
This is in contrast to Comcast's plans to cap access at 250GB/month for their "unlimited" plans. Compared to Time Warner Cable, that limitation seems downright charitable.
With the explosion of video content and the plethora of online services that now populate the Internet, Time Warner is working to alienate their customers with a bandwidth policy that is clearly unreasonable and extremely limiting.
Hopefully the test run (which will strike unlucky customers in Beaumont, Texas starting this Thursday) will crash and burn, with consumers leaving Time Warner Cable for more customer friendly ISPs.
I say "hopefully" because if customers don't send a clear message that this wanton profiteering is unacceptable, you can bet that this kind of pricing will spread throughout the nation, as other ISPs are following the test run closely to gauge its success.
40GB for $55 per month: Time Warner bandwidth caps arrive [Ars Technica]
Den Den Boy
Posted to Hot Stuff, In Your House on 3 June 2008
· Comments (2)
Other stuff like this: internet access, ISP, scummy, tiered pricing, Time Warner, Time Warner Cable
Wait, this is unreasonable? In Canada, it's largely been this way for years and years. So while it sucks I'm paying $50+ a month, at least it's fast and they've stopped throttling torrents while my grandma who basically just uses email and some basic web stuff is only paying $20 for a fairly reasonable speed connection.
I can agree with a cheeper plan for those who do use less of the file transfer capabilities. I don't agree with putting limits or charging extra for "overuse."