Bandwidth Caps
Despite raising prices of its Internet service within the previous year, Time Warner Cable announced in February 2009 that it would expand its bandwidth caps and overage fees into four additional markets by the end of the year.
On April 1, 2009, the cities to have metered billing were announced. In addition to Beaumont, Texas, the cities would be Rochester, NY, Austin and San Antonio, TX and Greensboro, NC.
These metered based billing plans were canceled according to Time Warner "due to customer misunderstanding"
Caps would range from 5 GB to 100GB with no unlimited option. The bandwidth will include downloads and uploads. If a user goes over, they will be charged $1 per additional gigabyte. Time Warner Cable announced they would provide a meter for users to monitor their usage. The new plan was set to begin in the summer of 2009, however due to protests they had decided against the bandwidth caps. Currently, users have unlimited bandwidth usage. Time Warner would have offered unlimited data for $150/month had the plan continued.
CEO Glenn Britt justified the new billing plans, claiming the infrastructures had to be continuously upgraded and users would pay for how much they use.
Facebook groups have been created in protest in addition to an online petition and a Web site dedicated to stop the movement. Other Web sites have been recently following the Time Warner cap plans that were already following broadband Internet providers metering and capping plans,
U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer and Congressman Eric Massa, both of whom represent portions of the Rochester, New York market that would be affected by the changes, announced their opposition to the plan and even went as far as to threaten legislation to ban such a scheme. On April 16, 2009, Time Warner abandoned the plan.
Read more about this topic: Road Runner High Speed Online
Famous quotes containing the word caps:
“At the milliners, the ladies we met were so much dressed, that I should rather have imagined they were making visits than purchases. But what diverted me most was, that we were more frequently served by men than by women; and such men! so finical, so affected! they seemed to understand every part of a woman’s dress better than we do ourselves; and they recommended caps and ribbons with an air of so much importance, that I wished to ask them how long they had left off wearing them.”
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)