Time Warner cable has revealed its intentions with its newly tested broadband caps. The short of it is that if you want "unlimited" internet it will cost you a staggering $150.00 a month.
The pricing structure breaks down as follows:
- A limited package for "light users" at 1GB/month, 768KB down / 128KB up, with overage charges of $2/GB/month.
- Road Runner Lite, Basic, Standard, and Turbo packages at 10GB / 20GB / 40GB / and 60GB caps, respectively, and overage charges at $1/GB/month.
- 100GB Turbo package at $75/month with overage fees of $1/GB, which, when coupled with that magic threshold of $75 in charges, becomes the "unlimited" plan.
Even more annoying for webmasters may be the revenue lost from advertisements. Many companies are now using flash based movies, all of which can eat a lot of bandwidth over the span of the month, which may force users to start blocking ads for fear of blowing their caps.
Time Warner is walking on thin ice here as it may lose high paying customers in droves. It"s not your mom and pop type families that provide most of the revenue, it"s the hardcore users who have the highest speed of internet, HDTV, DVR, and a couple premium channels that TWC may lose, by the boat load.