Under Fire, Time Warner Cable Yields on Metered-Access
Faced with growing opposition, Time Warner Cable announced Thursday that it was delaying the rollout of trial plans that would charge customers according to levels of how much they downloaded.
In a statement, the company said it would “alter plans to test Consumption Based Billing, shelving the trials while the customer education process continues.”
‘Great Deal of Misunderstanding’
CEO Glenn Britt said that it was “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.” He added that the company will not proceed with the trials until there has been “further consultation with our customers and other interested parties.”
The company also said that it would make measurement tools available “as quickly as possible,” so that customers could see how much bandwidth they actually use.
In the statement, Britt specifically mentioned that Time Warner looks forward “to continuing to work with Senator Schumer,” among others. Charles Schumer (D-NY) had recently joined Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY), the largest newspaper in Rochester, N.Y., and various consumer groups in protesting the planned rollout of the metered plan in that area. Massa has said he is preparing legislation to counter the tiered approach, which he said hurts America’s capability to compete globally by limiting access to broadband.
Additionally, Rochester-area competitor Frontier Communications announced this week that it was dropping its own plan for tiered DSL service — and looking to accommodate any disgruntled Time Warner customers.
Time Warner’s metered plan began last year in Beaumont, Texas, where a company spokesperson said that only about 14 percent of customers used enough bandwidth to hit the caps. The other trials, besides Rochester, are planned for Greensboro, North Carolina, and San Antonio and Austin in Texas.
In the most recently released version of…
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