By Martin H. Bosworth
ConsumerAffairs.com
April 16, 2009
Consumers scored a big win today when Time Warner Cable announced it would halt proposed trials of "metered" Internet broadband services, where users would pay extra for going over "caps" on the plans they subscribed to.
"It is clear from the public response over the last two weeks that there is a great deal of misunderstanding about our plans to roll out additional tests on consumption-based billing," said Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt. "As a result, we will not proceed with implementation of additional tests until further consultation with our customers and other interested parties, ensuring that community needs are being met."
The announcement that Time Warner Cable was backing down on the trials was made by Senator Chuck Schumer outside the company's regional headquarters in Rochester, New York. "The Internet is vital, like water, like electricity, and before you dramatically mess around with the way its provided, you ought to be very, very careful," he said.
The cable company had planned to roll out trials for metered broadband in several markets, including Rochester, Austin, Texas, and Greensboro, North Carolina, where subscribers would select one of several "tiers" of service based on their usage, with each tier including a cap on how much bandwith the user could utilize, and over-use charges if the user exceeded the cap.
But the plan was greeted with massive protests, both online and off. Users organized town meetings in the test markets to challenge what they saw as a punitive billing system designed to protect the cable company's investment in video and television services — by penalizing those who watched lots of video and TV shows online, which could easily cause the user to exceed their cap.
Web sites and blogs such as Karl Bode's Broadband Reports.com and Philip Daupier's StopTheCap.com became focus points for opposition to the caps, providing daily updates on the campaign against Time Warner Cable's policy. Activists used Twitter to debate with Time Warner Cable representatives over every aspect of the proposed changes.
The opposition grew so severe that it convinced Congressman Eric Massa (D-NY) to push for legislation that would ban "unfair pricing structures" and address Internet service competition in areas only served by one cable or one telecom provider.
Massa called Time Warner Cable's retreat a "grassroots victory," but said he would "move forward with our legislation to ensure that any future plans to charge customers based on how much they download do not spring up anywhere else."
Media watchdog group Free Press sent a petition with over 15,000 signatures urging the company to back down on its plan. Free Press' campaign director Tim Karr echoed Massa's statement that while the company's policy change was a huge victory, the issue would no doubt come up again.
"Let this be a lesson to other Internet service providers looking to head down a similar path...Consumers are not going to stand idly by as companies try to squeeze their use of the Internet," Karr said.
Britt's own language in the statement implied that the issue would be revisited, as he said Time Warner Cable would continue to roll out tools to help subscriber measure the amount of bandwith they use.
"While we continue to believe that consumption based billing may be the best pricing plan for consumers, we want to do everything we can to inform our customers of our plans and have the benefit of their views as part of our testing process," he said.
