Time Warner Launches Pay-Per-GB Internet Experiment

Thu Jan 17, 2008 1:11PM EST

See Comments (18)

Everything old is new again. Back in the early dialup days of AOL and Compuserve, we paid by the minute for our access to the internet, just like we paid for long distance. Then with the dawn of broadband came the big idea of the late-'90s: All you can eat in a month for a single price. Pay more and the data just comes faster.

But then, according to the cable companies, people started abusing the system. But rather than let people know that "unlimited" didn't really mean every bit of data you could suck down in a month, the providers just started cutting people off for overuse of bandwidth. The search for a new way to charge for internet service began, quietly.

Today we're seeing the first step toward such a new pricing system, as Time Warner is launching an experiment later this year to charge customers based on usage. It takes us back toward the per-minute pricing era by billing you based on how many gigabytes of data you suck down in a month. The idea: All those P2P and Torrent addicts pay their fair share, while the occasional chat room participant and TMZ reader gets a tiny bill.

I guess I'm OK with that. The company says that five percent of its users account for 50 percent of its bandwidth use. Sure, they ought to pay more... but how much? TW hasn't said what the pricing will be, what the download limits are, or even when the trial will begin. About all we know: It will happen in Beaumont, Texas, of all places, and will only affect new customers. I guess we'll have to wait and see how well it is received.

LINK: Time Warner links web prices with usage 

Comments on Time Warner Launches Pay-Per-GB Internet Experiment

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  • 1 Posted by fox95630 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 4:02PM EDT Report Abuse

    It sure sounds like we need more details before we can decide if this is a good deal or not. I live in an apartment complex that provides free broadband through a residential network. P2P users kill the network every once in a while and it makes it nearly impossible to even load web pages.

  • 2 Posted by taficke on Thu Sep 3, 2009 9:54PM EDT Report Abuse

    This is a horrible idea. I coudln't stand TW before and still cant after this.

  • 3 Posted by rogueist on Thu Sep 3, 2009 8:49PM EDT Report Abuse

    Ah, the ignorance continues as people believe that P2P people "kill" their service... In the meantime, the cable companies drum up a new draft of what to do for ordinary folk out there and say "yeah, lets drill em so they bleed hard" - only they also know that average folk will pay 2x to 3x what they do now based on their new plan because average folk have ZERO idea about how much bandwidth they ACTUALLY use. Years ago, a single webpage was on average only a few K or tens of K in size. Now with "web 2.0" being the mantra, 20mb to 100mb is the "average" page size. Spend a few hours browsing and you have used up MORE than those P2P users you complain about. Many places in Europe have got it the right way. If the users need more bandwidth and it gets blocked, the the way to solve it is to increase the backbone so that even the largest of downloads only takes a few seconds to complete. This way the traffic lanes always remain clear. One day someone in the US will hopefully get this idea too and the US will be catapulted into the modern age, instead of living in the stone age equivalent of modern technology, where our bandwidth is LESS than that of 3rd world developing nations!

  • 4 Posted by fox95630 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 4:02PM EDT Report Abuse

    rogueist, you present a valid point, however your claim that web 2.0 sites generate 20mb page downloads is a little off. Disregarding the fact that a "true" Web 2.0 application has a very small page load and focuses on continuous communication with the server, even a poorly designed application would be hard pressed to reach a 1 or 2mb size, much less 20 or even 100mb. The fact of the matter is that the bandwidth from a local network to an ISP is a finite quantity that can be overwhelmed by large downloads such as P2P traffic. Webpage loads are very small and fast by comparison.

  • 5 Posted by hingarfi on Thu Sep 3, 2009 4:19PM EDT Report Abuse

    Rogueist said: 'Now with "web 2.0" being the mantra, 20mb to 100mb is the "average" page size.' I do not believe the average web page is 20-100 MB. My max download speed is 3Mbits/sec (approx 370 KBytes /sec). Most of my pages load in 1-2 seconds.

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