[/caption]It looks like Time Warner has been forced to stall their internet cap usage testing in the Texas cities Austin and San Antonio for the time being. Surprisingly they have had trouble finding customers. </sarcasm> The company had plans to start these tests on the 13th of April, but due to the underwhelming response they have postponed the metered-testing until October.
This was the pricing structure Time Warner would've made available for those volunteering for the metered-bandwidth testing:
- $15/month for 1GB ($2 extra for any overage)
- $75/month for 100GB ($1 extra for any overage)
As I reiterated in my prior posting, Time Warner wants to start tiered pricing to prevent their customers from using the net to stream video because it poses a threat to their cable TV business. Yet their excuse (which they're still sticking to) is that they need help in raising money to fix their infrastructure, because the internet demand is rising at a rate that would supposedly outpace it. So putting cap their users fixes their infrastructure?
While the metered-testing may have been delayed in Texas, apparently it has started in Rochester, NY and Greensboro, NC. Frontier Communications, a competitor to Time Warner had plans to do the same thing with capping their customers; but due to public outrage they abandoned the idea. Because of that decision, former Time Warner customers have started jumping ship to Frontier. Ann Burr, a PR representative for Frontier in Rochester, NY told the Associated Press they have received hundreds of calls from Time Warner customers wanting to switch over. "I guess it has been a public relations crisis for Time Warner."
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