On the heels of Time Warner Cable's announcement yesterday that they'd be expanding metered billing trials in the States, Canadian cable ISP Cogego has dropped the news on customers in our forums that they'll be imposing metered billing on users. Bravely taking the brunt of the user complaints directly, Cogeco network engineer Krispy is fielding questions from users about the new shift. According to Cogeco, the new caps will be as follows:
Lite ? 10GB/mo bitcap - $2.50 per GB over to a maximum of $30
Lite Plus ? 20GB/mo bitcap - $2.00 per GB over to a maximum of $30
Standard ? 60GB/mo bitcap - $1.50 per GB over to a maximum of $30
Pro ? 100GB/mo bitcap - $1.00 per GB over to a maximum of $50
Users will start seeing usage charges on their bills in April and May but will not be charged officially until June -- as part of an apparent plan to get users used to the amount of bandwidth they use and the extra charges they'll incur. Everything counts toward your cap except Cogeco VoIP traffic, and users will be notified via e-mail when they get close to the cap. According to Cogeco, they'll be offering a new meter on their portal page.
The shift to metered billing started in Canada roughly a year ago, when Canadian carrier Rogers began imposing caps ranging from 2-95GB, with users on the lowest tier incurring overage charges of up to $5 per gigabyte.
