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A Win For Dusty Ol' Physical Media
June 4, 2008

That means you, too, Blu-ray. Time Warner Cable is regionally testing charging people for high-speed Internet use depending on how much content they upload and/or download. 
This will be sooo tremendous for people who love to watch films online, where file sizes are some of the largest around for digitally delivered video.
Basically, each user would get a monthly allowance of file size. And if they go over, they are charged $1 per gigabyte. Right now Beumont, Texas is one market undergoing this experiment, where you can get a 5 gigabyte monthly cap at $54.90 per month for relatively fast downloads. 
Sweet, that's enough to get about one digitally delivered high-def film a month. That might be fine for Average Joe user. But some consumers are likely going to want to watch more than that. And they aren't going to want to get fined for their large online appetite. Heck, the hungriest Time Warner Beumont customers may just find it cheaper to rent physical Blu-ray movies from Netflix or their local Blockbuster.
Time Warner says that it has been forced to come up with a usage based system to treat its customers fairly. Right now there are those geektastic few that take up half the available capacity on local lines, spoiling the majority of users' ability to enjoy their broadband service. Time Warner's Beumont tests have been expected for awhile, as noted in this January 2008 New York Times article.
Blu-ray supports can rejoice for now. But it's probably only a matter of time before these cable operators start ramping up the bandwith they offer customers. If Time Warner had a large enough digital infrastructure in place, it could charge more of a flat monthly rate for everyone, regardless of how much they download and/or streamed
 

Posted by Susanne Ault on June 4, 2008 | Comments (0)