Time Warner has decided to experiment with a new kind of tiered pricing in some markets. Customers will have their amount of monthly data transfer capped at a certain number of Gigabytes depending on the plan they choose. For example, a lower plan includes a download speed of 768 Kbps and limits you to 5 Gigabytes of total data transfer for the month for a total of $29.95. To put it in perspective, I download a game demo from Xbox Live and it’s 1 Gigabyte MINIMUM. Now think about downloading movies. Those are anywhere from 3 to 5 Gigabytes each. So you’ve paid $29.95 for 1 to 1.5 movie downloads. I hope you didn’t have any other planned activities on the Internet that month.
The largest plan gives the customer download speed of 15 Mbps and a total of 40 Gigabytes for $54.90. Admittedly, 15 Mbps is one fast ass connection, but I can burn through 40 Gigabytes in no time at that speed. So what Time Warner is telling me is that I’ll love my connection for the little bit of time that I can actually use it that month. They’re also telling me I’m a putz if I sign up for this.
For comparison’s sake, let’s look at my current provider who is a local provider operating in a city of 80,000 people. I’m getting 3 Mbps for $25 per month with no limit on data transfer. It’s reliable. Their customer service is great. I have zero complaints.
The only way I can see Time Warner getting away with this is due to the very nature of the broadband availability for a given customer. Usually, you only have 1 to 3 options to choose from. You basically have to go with whatever you can get and makes the most sense.
