NEW YORK, NY — In the wake of the Federal Communications’ Commission’s investigation of broadband internet service provider Comcast’s traffic-management policies, other broadband providers are beginning to seek ways to keep themselves out of the line of federal fire.On Wednesday, Time Warner Cable confirmed rumors that began spreading about 24 hours earlier when a leaked memo indicated Time Warner’s Road Runner division would begin testing what the company calls “Consumption Based Billing” in the relatively small Beaumont, TX, market.
“We will use the results of the trial to evaluate results for possible future nationwide rollouts,” the memo stated.
As Time Warner intends to employ it, CBB is a tiered pricing structure that will allow consumers to pay for cable-broadband internet access based on the amount of data they download. New subscribers will be signed up for the program automatically, but current subscribers may choose to remain on their current “all-you-can-eat for one fee” schedule.
According to the leaked memo, Road Runner will provide users with tools to monitor their bandwidth usage and will allow customers to upgrade their plan if they misjudge their needs. Customers who exceed their bandwidth limits will face steep overage charges in much the same way cell-phone users do.
Time Warner spokesman Alex Dudley told the Associated Press the move was intended to improve network availability by making broadband more costly for heavy users like file-sharers and high-definition videophiles. According to Dudley, about 5-percent of Road Runner’s subscribers monopolize as much as 50-percent of the network’s capacity.
The pricing tiers and their associated bandwidth limits have not been established, Dudley told the AP, but he expects the new system to roll out sometime in the second quarter.
The move, while controversial, may help Time Warner avoid Comcast’s fate. The FCC is investigating the larger broadband provider at the behest of consumers, competitors and watchdog groups who complained about service being throttled or shut off entirely when heavy users reached a data-transfer cap — a cap Comcast still has not defined publicly. According to the company’s Acceptable Use Policy, consumers could run afoul of Comcast’s generosity if they generate “levels of traffic sufficient to impede others’ ability to send or retrieve information.”
Cox also has been criticized for using forged reset packets to deny heavy users unrestricted access to its network.
Both Comcast and Cox have said bandwidth throttling in the case of heavy users is necessary to ensure network availability for everyone else, and the companies believe they are allowed to “manage traffic” in that way under current FCC guidelines.
