Time Warner to bill on Internet Usage rather then flat fee

I think coffee houses have been expropriating value from light internet users like me by taking an inordinate share of the bandwidth pie. If they pay more, that's fine with me. That cost will be reflected in the price for their coffee, or perhaps as a fee like they do at hotels. That's fine by me as well.

 

Where I live in China, I believe you have a choice of flat rate, pay-by-hour, or pay-by-bandwidth-usage. I think this type of choice is good. Personally, I take the flat rate because I'm connected 24/7. But my friends who don't use the internet much can still check their emails and look up some news, while paying a relatively low fee each month.

I think it would be nice if you're given a choice. I've always found that just having the flat-rate is too inflexible.

 

Time warner wants to get paid when everyone switches to getting all their movies off the internet. Everything is going to be on demand, and people are going to stop watching regular broadcasts. They need to cover themselves.

 

they should try to combine this with some sort of congesition pricing if they are truly committed to reducing bottlenecks .

If you are using a lot of bandwidth during peak times, you are hurting other users on the system so it makes sense to charge or charge more then.

If you're using lots of bandwidth when there's nobody on the system it's not really harming anybody and it doesn't really impose a marginal cost on the ISP.

See above - you're assuming that there's a marginal cost to ISP's for heavy bandwidth users that is passed on to light users.

I am not positive - but I don't believe this to be the case. Provided the bandwidth is not overloaded - the marginal cost ofsending additional data down the wire is negligible to zero

 

I download multiple torrents 24/7 so this is going to suck for me but I still think it's a good move for Time Warner. It's a way to discourage bandwidth eaters and make sure their asses stay safe from the bandwith limits.

Not sure what all of them are going to do when more people start downloading movies and there is no bandwith left. It would be nice to see a congressman start trying to get a complete overall of the communication infrastructure in the US.