BroadbandCaps
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Julius Genachowski voices support for capped, tiered broadband
FCC honcho Julius Genachowski has come out in favor of usage-based pricing for your broadband. At this year's Cable Show, he said that he supported the sort of usage caps that Comcast adopted last week and hoped that such plans would reduce costs for those who use less internet. Comcast's new pricing structure offers a 300GB monthly cap, after which point it'll charge users $10 for every extra 50GB used. We're not sure how this'll play out, but we suspect anyone with a Netflix or Hulu addiction might feel less than pleased this morning.
Time Warner Cable lays out broadband capping plans, says $150 for "unlimited" use
In a move seemingly designed to further our frustrations with broadband providers, Time Warner Cable has soft-announced an "unlimited" package once its new data caps go into place... for an affordable $150 monthly charge. Responding to criticism over the company's plans to start capping usage and charging for overages, Landel Hobbs clarified the provider's stance, letting users know that the capping would be limited to a $75 ceiling, thus (when paired with its top tier plan) would provide "virtually unlimited" usage. Virtually unlimited. Here's a rundown of what the COO proposes: A limited package for "light users" at 1GB / monthly, 768KB down / 128KB up, with overage charges of $2 / GB / month. Road Runner Lite, Basic, Standard, and Turbo packages at 10GB / 20GB / 40GB / and 60GB caps, respectively, and overage charges at $1 / GB / month. A big daddy, 100GB Turbo package at $75 / month with overage fees of $1 / GB, which, when coupled with that magic threshold of $75 in charges, becomes the "unlimited" plan. We only have two questions, guys. First, how will you let end users know they're hitting caps? Right now there's no centralized solution for monitoring bandwidth. Even cell phones show minutes used, so will you give us the infrastructure for broadband monitoring? Secondly -- instead of giving users a "virtually" unlimited package, why not just sell an unlimited package at $150 a month? The impression we get is that you want to leave the door open for aggressive users, and that your capping of capping charges might be a moving target in the right situation. [Via eWeek]
