Time Warner Cable tries metering Internet use

That's sick. If someone tried to put a cap, even 100 Gb on my service I would cancel immediately.

TW has already determined that the revenues they generate from the business they already have are enough to pay to maintain their infrastructure.

This is transparently a way to generate additional revenue.

If they are so concerned about fairness, please let them tell us what they do with the money they receive from people who do not use their internet bandwidth at all. Are they giving any of that money back?

I hope the people of Beaumont see through this and let TW know how they feel by cancelling their cable internet and getting DSL.

A good reason to not allow city monopoly by cable company. Start looking for alternative, and if there are none, then the market will cause one to soon appear if the CABLE COMPANIES ARE NOT ALLOWED TO ACT AS LOCAL MONOPOLIES.

Metering is the way to go. There simply is no better alternative. It should allow better and cheaper service for the majority of users.
The only danger is that in areas where there is no competition allowances will be set low or prices for going over them too high. If done sensibly its the best way for everyone.

We're already paying different amounts for different connection speeds, that is the metering, period. If they keep on selling more and more bandwidth without updating their infrastructure that's their problem. Up the cost per Mb/s.
They fail to mention is that the 5% of users that are using up the bandwidth are mostly businesses/schools. I'm sure they'd rather you think it's kids/p2p.

This is a means of giving people suprise bills when they unknowingly go over the limit. I would support them implementing a system like the power company, where you would pay for different speeds during different times of the day. IE, you would have a package for 1mb during peak and 3mb offpeak... etc.

It's not fair to charge people for crap they don't want, such as banners, pop-ups and drm streaming media that doesn't work half the time... along with the cable company being able to insert ads into html. If I've got to download a 600mb file 3-4 times because my connection keeps on timing out it's not really fair to charge me for it? Are we going to get refunds for incomplete transfers? It took me two days to download debian because of connection errors.

Broadcast cable is a slowly dying media. They need to embrace the internet and start offering some dynamic content instead of hindering it.

I'm assuming they also include 'free sites' into this deal. You can DL all the shows/content you want from TW sites/partners without using your bit-allowance; justifying this as being in-network traffic, while really pushing advertizing hits...end rant...

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lol 40gigs for 54$? 40 Gigs is almost nothing I use up at least 70gigs per month, downloading things with p2p that's not even counting internet traffic and streaming vids that are everywhere. and I am not a heavy user by any means, I am just avg from what I've seen. Let's not even talk about 5gig(1dvd) plan. It's laughable.

If TW did this in my area, I'd dump them immediately and switch to something else, like fios. Though I am sure they aren't dumb enough to do in an area with competitors present.

It seems fair enough to me. Let the people who are using the most bandwidth be the ones to pay for it. I think they should create a "traffic meter" so that people will know how much they've downloaded/uploaded, though. If they automatically included something like that with the service, it would be helpful.

Just paying different amounts for different speeds may not be enough to make things fair. Some people may not create much traffic, but still like to get the things they do done fast; the best thing for them would be a high-speed but low-bandwidth connection. I'm a great believer in service packages that offer maximum flexibility and don't require me to subsidize other people's usage.

Metering maybe somewhat feasible if the prices and bounds presented were bound to todays standards and not being compared against stone age of dial up.

This is a huge step backwards. If people wanted meters, why did pay by the minute go the way of the dinosaur. Unlimited sells, that is why cell phone companies are finely starting to go to unlimited plans. I find it fitting that they compare it to a gas gage, people don't want to have to ration the Internet like they do gas. What happens when little Billy discovers streaming porn and runs up a 100Gb bill?

TW customers should get together, and max their bandwidth. Make your voices heard by taking down a few of there routers.

This is nothing new in Aus. All of our data comethrough those nice big fibreoptic sea cable and every kb is counted and charged to our isps who in turn charge us. We pay $70AU a month for 20gb On peak and 40gb off peak.

We are on one of the largest plan available and we are lucky as it is also one of the few that does not meter uploads. So yes i sympathise with you and yes it sucks but we have a better solution that increased costs (although $1 a gig is cheap!) our accounts ar simply shaped, we dont pay for connection speed so when our quota is reached they slow our speed down, if your really unlucky it can be quicker to connect with dial up.

Hmmm - on one hand, I see the dilemma, the majority of their money comes from the 95% who use very little. But what if all the sudden Apple TV or the new Netflix box or another high-def video streaming service start up? A lot of users are gonna hit caps they never even thought about before.

This is really bad. I am a huge movie fan and will download rentals and watch them with the wife every night sometime 3 or 4 movies. Also think of us gamers that stay online all night how much do you think that bill would run. I am not just talking about the WoW players but the Playstation, Xbox and Wii users. They all have fun online features but I don't think any parent will want to come home to find that TW charged them $50 more cause the kid played MarioCart with online friends for 8 hours on the weekend.
My mother-in-law stays up until 3am sometimes playing free online card games. Are all the retired people that play on or surf the net going to have to pay more, knowing they are on a fixed income? I am all for the companies making the money, but when is enough going to be enough.
Well the way I see it, if they want to do this, is they at least need to get their connections working more than 50% of the time. Not to mention the people they are basicaly scaming when someone gets the 7mb connection and are only getting 3mb. Then they might worry about more money from the mettering.
If they are doing this so they don't have to cut money from their pockets to upgrade the system then I say why do we have to pay or why is it our fault you put too many users on the segments you have without upgrading the equipment or the amount of equipment they have.
All that being said, if they do go forward with this I hope that those areas and anyone else would drop their service. Even if there are no other alternative solutions. I am sure when they stop making money at all, being the money whores they are becoming, they will be more open to an alternative solution.
Maybe raising the price a couple dollars for each package. Even though some say they are not using it they shouldn't have to pay, its the speed at which you can do that should matter not how much you use. If you really want to save money from that bill if your not using it, cancel it and go to the library, ours has high speed, and dowwn load your few things there. Oh, wait you won't be able to since they will have to stop service or may be over their cap and cannot alow you to use it. If you still have yours up after this can I come over and finish my online classes on your connection?