Time Warner Cable Testing To Charge Based On Internet Usage or Nearest Byte Billing

Broadband News is reporting that Time warner Cable is testing overage charges for its RoadRunner cable broadband service. The system is aimed at gaining additional revenue from "5% of subscribers who utilize over half of the total network bandwidth." The trial will determine whether it's practical to deploy such a system nationally.
While I think it is bull or better what come out of rear end of the bull, we all remember to begining of the internet services, in those dial up days and ISDN days. They (phone companies or ISPs) charged based on usage. It suddenly died soon as "All you can eat" model came to be.
Time warners 5% of users will be 95% once the multimedia service become more main stream. People will be renting movies and music on line. So higher usage will be for more that 5%.
On the other hand, Time warner may be trying to recoup what it might lose in PPV movies!
Broadband News also mentioned that; "It is rumored that Comcast has also conducted such tests, but never implemented the system because they were afraid of consumer backlash. We recently spoke to several ISPs and an industry analyst, all of whom shared those same concerns. ISPs are under pressure from investors to gain more revenue from higher-consumption users, but have had great success marketing the "all you can eat" business model to consumers."
So Roadrunners you might soon be coyotes or something on coyote's plate.
You can read more at Broadband News.

tag: Roadrunner, Time warner Cable, perbyte billing, capped services