Filed under: Google (GOOG), Time Warner Cable (TWC)

There was an interesting read over at Slashdot.org today. In a story last night from the Associated Press, it looks like Time Warner Cable Inc. (NYSE: TWC) may be testing out a web metering service for its internet access.

The company is testing a service with new Time Warner Cable World wide web subscribers in Beaumont, Texas where customers will have a monthly allowance for the amount of data with a $1.00 charge per gigabyte. The company had already warned back in January that it was going to test rates and test some metered and tiered internet access services, so this isn’t prone to be a bomb dropping into the school yard.

Slower services of 768 kbps with a 5-gigabyte monthly allowance are going to run $29.95, while their fastest and larger service with fast downloads at up to 15 megabits per second and a 40-gigabyte cap will run $54.90 per month.

Apparently 5% of its internet users are taking up half of the capacity on local cable lines.

For basic web users this is a non-starter. But for those who download videos and send out or access massive files regularly, this could become a head scratcher as very few consumers have any real clue what their internet usage means in terms of bandwidth. It seems that Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) YouTube and all that free porn are going to end up costing you after all.

That’s one way around net neutrality…

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 at 7:20 am and is filed under Stocks News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.