• We should now be fully online following an overnight outage. Apologies for any inconvenience, we do not expect there to be any further issues.

Time Warner to offer metered bandwidth in TX area?

Golgatha

Lifer
Jul 18, 2003
12,400
1,076
126

Source from ArsTechnica

Personally I would hate this because I would be paying to see embedded flash ads and such. Not to mention the bandwidth needed for tracking cookies etc.

Under the proposed scheme, new customers will be able to choose from a couple of different plans with varying bandwidth caps. They'll be given online tools to monitor usage and will be able to upgrade to the next higher tier of service to avoid charges for exceeding their monthly bandwidth limit. If the trial works well, Time Warner would then roll out bandwidth caps to current customers: "We will use the results of the trial to evaluate results for possible future nationwide rollouts," reads the memo.p
 

Agentbolt

Diamond Member
Jul 9, 2004
3,340
1
0
In the "Verizon throttling BT traffic" thread people were saying this is going to simply be the way it is nationwide within a few years. Internet being billed like a cell phone, yikes. Not sure how I feel about that.
 

AnonymouseUser

Diamond Member
May 14, 2003
9,943
107
106
If it comes with Opera and a simple user's guide it could be decent. Using Opera to block ads (including flash ads) and use cached images when possible would save plenty of bandwidth.
 

vi edit

Elite Member
Super Moderator
Oct 28, 1999
62,484
8,345
126
Originally posted by: Agentbolt
In the "Verizon throttling BT traffic" thread people were saying this is going to simply be the way it is nationwide within a few years. Internet being billed like a cell phone, yikes. Not sure how I feel about that.

It really comes down to pricing and limits.

My current cable company offers a "Lite" service that gets like 64k/64k. Basically a smidge over dial up speeds. They charge $15 a month for it. But it's an "always on" service, which is a nice bonus over dial up. But the speeds are an insult.

If they went the bandwith route and said "We'll give you 5 gig a month, but a 5mb burst rate for $15" that might actually be a better service to that type of subscriber.

Hell, I'd even consider doing something like that since I really don't use the 'net much at home anymore myself. It'd save me almost $35 a month over what I'm paying.

Pricing and limits are key.