Time Warner Cable CEO: Metered Broadband The Future – Assuming competition, consumers have nothing to say about it….

19 Sep 2008

Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt, whose company is currently engaged in metered billing trials, this week told investors that he believes that all broadband service will eventually be metered or consumption-based. Whether that’s really a belief or a personal pipe dream isn’t quite clear, but what’s clear is that Time Warner Cable wants a future where broadband operators bill you in much the same way your local electic utility does. From IP Democracy:

Speaking at Goldman Sachs’ Communacopia Conference today (webcast here), Britt said that he believes consumption-based broadband is “where we will ultimately go.” Comparing broadband service to an electric utility, Britt said “with electricity we buy something called kilowatt hours and it s a measure of both voltage and throughput and the amount you re consuming. I think broadband is going to develop into something like that.”

Time Warner Cable is currently running a trial where users are capped between 5-40GB, then charged for every additional gigabyte. Given that’s a 1,000-1,500% markup over the price Time Warner Cable pays for bandwidth, and such low caps would help Time Warner Cable strangle competing video options that threaten their cableTV revenues, it’s no wonder that Britt’s personal crystal ball tells him that metered billing is inevitable.

The reality remains quite different, as many broadband customers remain vehemently opposed to metered usage. It’s also a difficult concept for Time Warner Cable to implement in competitive markets like Manhattan, where uncapped Verizon FiOS would eat capped and metered Time Warner Cable for lunch. Luckily for Britt, many of his markets (vast stretches of upstate NY come to mind) aren’t particularly competitive, so the future can probably be anything Britt and his investor collective would like it to be.
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