June 4, 2008 2:16 PM
Metered Bandwidth Not New
I've been reading a lot of reactions to Time Warner's decision to test out bandwidth caps with overage charges, and there's one common thread I notice in many of the comments that isn't always included in the articles: the concept of metered bandwidth is nothing new.
You used to get dialup access by buying minutes until consumer demand was found to be greatest for the all-you-can-eat model.
And many satellite providers have daily caps that will even cut your service off entirely for the next day if you go over, though unfortunately there aren't any solutions for most of these users as the only people I know using satellite are doing so because they can't get connectivity any other way.
So while this does set a precedent in the cable world and possibly even the wireline broadband market, it's not new.
[Update: I hit publish a little too early as I just read that while this does set a precedent in the US market, internationally some countries have been using bandwidth caps for quite some time. In the UK, for example, apparently if you agree to a bandwidth cap you can pay less for service. Now that's metered bandwidth I can get behind, where caps are used to lower the cost of service rather than raise.]
