Thursday, January 17, 2008

From Flat Fee To Number Of Hours Used?



"Time Warner Cable Inc said on Wednesday it is planning a trial to bill high-speed Internet subscribers based on their amount of usage rather than a flat fee, the standard industry practice.

The second largest U.S. cable operator said it will test consumption-based billing with subscribers in Beaumont, Texas later this year as a part of a strategy to help reduce congestion of its network by a minority of consumers who pay the same monthly fee as light users.

The company believes the billing system will impact only heavy users, who account for around 5 percent of all customers but typically use more than half of the total network bandwidth, according to a company spokesman.



Personally I feel that as soon as you have a good thing going somebody comes along and ruins it! I remember when AOL switched to a flat rate and they got so inundated with people who wanted to sign up using the new flat rate that for a time AOL was bogged down.

Now comes news of an ISP provider that wants to bill according to usuage. I don't see this having a very good outcome. It just seems that they are wanting to try to charge more.

Call me "old-fashioned" but why would they want to mess with something that is working?

Of course the answer to that is that they want to try and get more money!

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