Time Warner’s plan to charge more for heavy Internet use inspires legislation
June 18th, 2009, 7:59 am · 9 Comments · posted by Tamara Chuang, a.k.a. The Gadgetress
Noted: Remember Time Warner Cable’s plan last April to impose limits on Internet use or face overage fees? After consumers cried foul, the cable provider pulled back though it didn’t drop the idea altogether.
Now, a freshman legislator has introduced a bill to make unfair usage plans illegal and force Internet service providers to justify any plan with “consumption based billing,” as Time Warner called it, to federal regulators, reports Wired News.
Says Wired: “Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) wrote the so-called Broadband Internet Fairness Act after successfully helping to force Time Warner Cable to stop its trial of new pricing schemes on his constituents in Rochester, N.Y. Net neutrality group Free Press and the anti-tier group Stop the Cap are already vocally supporting the measure.”
The bill would apply to any Internet service provider — including wireless, satellite, DSL and the other usual suspects — with more than 2 million customers and multiple service plans that charge based on data used. It would be up to the Federal Trade Commission to decide whether caps are justified.
Now the bill doesn’t ban the ability to charge based on consumption, explained Stop The Cap writer Phillip Dampier in a FAQ page for readers. He points out that the legislation needs to withstand legal scrutiny.
“The bill is designed to accomplish what needs to be done – preventing providers from launching Internet Overcharging schemes that, upon review by the appropriate agencies, are simply economically unjustified,” he wrote.
In April, Time Warner said it had not planned to implement the caps in Orange County. Time Warner still wants to bill customers based on usage, but it retrenched after poor publicity. It plans to find tools to help customers realize how much — or how little — Internet they use before launching any program.
From the web:
- Bill Would Limit Broadband Fees Based on Use (PC World)
- Time Warner Cable Caps Prompt Fairness Bill (PCMag)
- TECHNOLOGY: Massa submits internet cap bill (Rochester City Newspaper)
- Massa Introduces “Internet Fairness” Act (WXXI)
More TV news:
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Easy fix. Drop Time Warner and go to AT&T.
I wish I could! My apartment complex is real old and it’s phone wires do not support DSL. My choices are dial up or TWC. I hate TWC. But I love faster internet.
TWC want to charge based on the useage just like the gas, electricity, and water company charge it customers. I’m sure other ISP would do the same however, if the don’t TWC will lose a lot of customers. Unless the government intents to subsidize the Internet Providers the government needs to allow the plan to go forward.
If I recall correctly, we used to pay by utilization. It was called your phone bill. You dialed in to a phone number and depending on how long you were on the call, your bill was bigger or smaller. Why is this now taboo? Some people use their internet a ton and others barely touch it. Should the guy who spams be entitled to pay the same fee as grandma who gets pictures of her grandkids every other week?
If a grandma is only using it to get pictures of her grandkids every other week she can pay for dial up and save a ton. Where as someone like me, who uses it for work and pleasure would have to pay out the butt. No. It is not fair.
It’s not taboo, It’s greed pure and simple. They charge us pleanty for cable as it is. We get riped off from them showing the same show on three different channels. Are they going to do the same for internet?
TWC is the worst. I’d go with AT&T or Verizon before using anything that they offered.
this is not cool at all. First of all, their service is not stable. Second the only reason they want to do this is to make more money. Any business should be able to do that. But why would you bill more when their customer service is terrible and the network constantly goes down? Take a look at the service they have in europe, they have more bandwidth and they always have the newest network technology. And they dont have a tier system.
The TW network is old and run down. they already make lots of money, they should upgrade instead of trying to juice the customer as much as possible using old technology.
TW charges too much for internet already! There service sucks, it constantly freezes and takes forever to start up again! I’m glad they ran a free weekend of HBO, and Cinamax. They proved it’s not worth paying for that either! Same movies on most channels and all were from last year!