Time Warner Drops Bandwidth Caps…For Now

After a flood of consumer protest, Time Warner Cable has called off plans to test bandwidth caps on broadband Internet access...at least for now.

After howls of consumer protest, Time Warner Cable has—at least for the moment—scrapped plans to place caps on the amount of bandwidth its broadband Internet customers can use, and charge for any overages during a given billing period.

“It is clear from the public response over the last two weeks that there is a great deal of misunderstanding about our plans,” said Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt, in a statement.

Time Warner started testing the system in Beaumont, Texas, earlier this year, and recently announced two weeks ago it was planning to take the program to four additional cities. The idea behind consumption based billing is that customers would be able to download a certain amount of material for a flat fee during a given billing period; data transfer in excess of that amount would be billed at increasingly higher rates, with the idea being that the system’s heaviest users (who, collectively, put the most stress on the system) pay more for the service.

Most broadband providers offer flat-fee billing regardless of the amount of bandwidth users. Consumer groups and even policitians like New York Senator Charles Schumer objected to Time Warner’s plans.

Time Warner has said it plans to continue “educating” customers about the metered billing program. A good part of the opposition to Time Warner’s proposed bandwidth caps was the proposed billing arrangements, which were substantially higher than any other metered offering on the market.