Net neutrality, bring it on. Usage Charges on the way to Internet

Apparently Time Warner Cable has worked around the idea of a tiered internet, where those who want faster speeds could pay more, by putting in place a service usage charge, like cell phone minutes.

Reuters has the “end of the internet” story:

Time Warner Cable Inc has started testing a service that charges consumers of high-speed Internet service based on their usage. Broadband subscribers in Beaumont, Texas, will be charged $1 per gigabyte above monthly allowances. The new policy is intended to address the top 5 percent of users, who have spent a "disproportionate" amount of time on Time Warner Cable's network.

Such usage is "taxing the infrastructure." In order to make investments in the infrastructure, we have to find the revenue to pay for it."

What they won’t tell you: the U.S. lags behind other industrialized counties when it comes to broadband speeds. All the American companies have to do is boost the bandwidth to accommodate the typical customer usage. With Time Warner’s usage plan, they can have it both ways, expand broadband and charge customers for usage time. It’s brilliant and costly for you and me. It’s starts getting wonkish with talk about sending and receiving limits, but in layman’s terms, it’s just another way of saying how much of the companies broadband was used when you used the internet.

A $29.95 per month plan is slow and only allows “about 349,525 e-mails, play 170 hours of online games, or download 1,383 digital songs per month.”

At the high end, a $54.90 monthly fee for a 15-mps service and “allow subscribers to watch 124 hours of standard-definition videos or download 11,070 songs.

Don’t be fooled, you would be surprised at how much broadband you use.

Critics make the point that: “the new pricing structure and usage limits…would curtail interest in viewing videos online and enrage consumers who currently pay for unlimited service.

Think about this from a Time Warner representative, "If usage patterns are such that we need to change those, we certainly can."

And we all know what that means. They can always LOWER the caps on usage, charging us more.