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Time Warner Pulls Plug On Metered Billing Tests
fudreporter is one of many who writes to tell us that Time Warner is not planning to continue their tiered consumption tests at this time. The company is not completely admitting defeat, stating that they "may return to the idea in the future," but for now the test has been shut down. "The plan would have established several tiers based on how much consumers use the Internet. Time Warner Cable had said at the time that it believed that consumers who download the most content need to pay more to cover infrastructure upgrades. The plan was first announced two weeks ago, then modified with higher download caps last week. In a news release yesterday, Glenn Britt, the chief executive of Time Warner Cable, said, 'We will not proceed with implementation of additional tests until further consultation with our customers and other interested parties, ensuring that community needs are being met.'"
Wrong. The internet backbone is fundamentally limited and, thanks to bittorent, it's finally being congested. Think about it this way: if everyone maxed out their connections all the time, everyone's connection speed would be a small fraction of what they currently take for granted. As media streaming -- bittorent, netflix, hulu, or whatever -- becomes increasingly popular, connection speeds WILL hit a wall. When people do realize that internet bandwidth is a limited commodity, something is going to have to give. I, for one, am not going to pay the same monthly fee for 1GB/month (to use basic sites like slashdot) that 100GB/month users use to download illegal media. Sure, I'm opposed to RIAA, as is everyone on slashdot. But there comes a point where I'm fed up with these bandwidth leeches.