Time Warner Cable is going to start charging its customers extra to download games, watch videos or even update your games. This is going to adversely affect any internet based business, regardless of actual cost to the customer.
Percieved pricing will prevent some customers from using services like Impulse and Steam.
Imagine downloading a "free" 8 GB HD movie and having to pay $8.00 just for downloading it? Yep, it's $1.00 per GB.
Time Warner did a test run of the price gouging effort in a few cities and is now poised to widen its grip nationally.
Locally, a city council member has spoken out against Time Warner, but to what avail?
Leffingwell said not only will the plan have a significant effect on families who use the Internet to watch videos, download music or other activities that take up significant bandwidth, he’s also worried about the impact it would have on business owners, particularly those who work in the high-tech and creative services industries who need continued access to broadband Internet.
Leffingwell chastises Time Warner for Internet pricing plan
There's a loophole for some of us. Even though Time Warner has the monopoly on cable and dsl internet service where I live, a secondary provider that uses Time Warner's infrastructure doesn't have to apply the same pricing scheme. I got word from Earthlink this morning that they have no plans to copy Time Warner and that their customers are safe from the price increases. A time Warner customer can simply switch over and still use the exact same infrastructure as before and maintain peace of mind while using the internet. You don't even need to change your cable or DSL modem.
Hopefully, more customers will be able to find secondary providers like Earthlink. I'd suggest that any TW customers switch to whatever secondary provider is in their area before this hits the fan.
