In the summer of 2008, Time Warner Cable began testing a bandwidth cap of 40 GB per month in Beaumont, TX. If testing was successful, they would bring the cap to additional cities. Despite raising prices of its internet service within the last year, Time Warner Cable announced in February 2009 that they would expand its bandwidth caps and overage fees into four additional markets by the end of the year. On April 1st, those 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.

Aw hell naw.

TWC CEO Glenn Britt tells BusinessWeek, “We need a viable model to be able to support the infrastructure of the broadband business. We made a mistake early on by not defining our business based on the consumption dimension.”

To do that, TWC has been testing plans with 5, 10, 20, or 40GB of data transfer per month, with prices ranging from $30 to $55 a month. Compared to other ISPs, this seems like an abysmal deal, since AT&T’s DSL has no official cap and Comcast offers 250GB per month (Which they were heavily criticized for!), generous by comparison.

40GB/month = 5 HD movies off iTunes. This is corporate greed and insanity at its finest.

So instead of paying for your internet like you pay for cable or trash collection, you will be charged based on usage, like electricity. That’s like charging people extra for cable because they watch too much TV. The reason that Time Warner is choosing these mid-level markets for advanced testing of their bandwidth caps is because they have a monopoly on high speed internet service in these areas, where Verizon FIOS and Comcast are unavailable (And please don’t try to tell me that Frontier’s max 1.5m/s is competition).

Will we be charged less for using less bandwidth? Of course not!

Here’s the problem: Most people won’t even come close to exceeding these bandwidth caps (~90% don’t use 5GB per month). The great majority of people who pay for internet are older. They check email, occasionally browse the web, check their bank accounts, maybe peruse Facebook, and that is about it. But these internet users are declining.

This bandwidth cap is going to hurt the younger generation who is increasingly tech savvy. If you use iTunes, YouTube, Hulu, xBox Live, PS3 Online, NetFlix, torrents, VoIP (Like Vonage or Skype) or stream any TV shows, this is going to hurt you.

The initial 5GB cap can be exceeded easily in a weekend. The maximum 40GB cap is so absurdly low, almost anyone who uses the online services I mentioned above will surpass the cap. And since that price got jacked up to $55, and every GB over fee is $1, TWC Road Runner customers are going to be looking at a possible double priced bill if this cap goes forth as planned starting this summer.

Britt’s rationale for the change—infrastructure is expensive—is tough to understand. Cable’s physical plant has been in the ground for years; even hybrid fiber-coax systems have been widely deployed for some time. Internet access simply runs across the existing network, and one of cable’s big advantages over DSL is that speeds can be upgraded cheaply by swapping in new DOCSIS headend gear, with DOCSIS 3.0 the current standard. Compared to what Verizon is doing with fiber and AT&T with its quasi-fiber U-Verse, cable Internet is a bargain (well, for the operators).

So why is Time Warner making this move?

1- People are cutting their cable subscriptions in wake of the recession and increasingly available content online.

People can watch all of their favorite shows on the station’s website, Hulu, or buy them on iTunes. They don’t have to watch the 6 o’clock news to get local news and they don’t have to watch Anderson Cooper 360º to get their national news. Off topic, but I guarantee Fox News has the highest ratings because their target audience (Republicans) don’t use the internet well and rely on TV still. Oo burn.

So what Time Warner sees from a business model is decreasing revenue from cable subscriptions. They also see sites like Hulu and YouTube increasing their revenue through advertising. So Time Warner says to their dumbass selves, “If we are providing the connection for these people to watch shows, and they are the ones increasing profit, we’ll just bridge the gap and charge more.”

It is fair in logic, but internet usage and net neutrality is specifically designed to prevent against this type of monopoly.

2- A very few people are using an insane amount of data

Pirates, or just really lonely torrenters, can easily burn through over a TB of traffic in a month. These extreme of the extreme users (We’re talking less than half a percent) do hurt everyone else and should be stopped. But a 5GB cap, or even a 40GB cap, are both so insanely low that consumer revolt is upon us.

It’s certainly understandable that ISPs would want to curtail abusive users but I don’t use a TB a month, but I sure as hell use a lot more than 5GB!

I would love to simply jump off the Road Runner service, that I recently got and love, but there is no fair alternative in our market.

So it is time to fight back.

Visit http://stoptwc.info/ for more information on the topic. File a complaint with the New York Attorney General on how Time Warner is attempting to block competition for sites such as Hulu, Youtube, iTunes, and other online services by forcing users to limit their usage of these sites with arbitrary bandwidth caps. Email your complaint to realideas@twcable.com. This email address was set up so TWC has a single place to check for everything related to the new tier policy. Call Customer Service 585-756-5000 or 1-800-756-7956 - Level 3 support number: 1-585-756-1119 - Colleen Bernard at TWC Customer Care: 585-756-1202

If they’re going to actually implement these caps, we need to demand a cap closer to 200GB or 250GB a month which is offered by a comparable rival (Comcast). That way they can weed out the data hogs and not hurt the common internet user.