PC Magazine has a write-up about TWC’s proposed bandwidth caps, which I briefly mentioned here.
According to PC Mag, TWC will offer a super-rock-bottom class of services with 768kbps down/128kbps up. This will cost you $14.99 a month, and you will have only 1GB of bandwidth each month, with overages costing you $2.00 per GB. TWC claims that 30% of its customers use less than 1Gb/month, but I find that hard to believe. I’m currently running an experiment on my own bandwidth usage, and over 72 hours, I’ve already used nearly 17 GB of bandwidth, just watching things on Hulu and Netflix, along with 3 Linux distros I downloaded via bittorrent. (I’ll post more detailed results later.) Of course, with only 768kps down, you won’t be doing a whole lot of media streaming, so maybe you won’t bust through that 1GB ceiling, but I think that’s a ludicrously low allowance.
Of course, TWC says “hey, if that’s not enough for you, let me introduce you to my friends, Roadrunner Lite, Basic, Standard, and Turbo, with exanded caps of 10, 20, 40, and 60 GB respectively! And if that’s still not enough for you, I can get you a cap of 100Gb for just $75, and if that’s not enough, I can get you unlimited bandwidth for the low low price of just $150 a month!”
Wow. What. A. Deal.
In related news, a consumer advocacy group is asking Congress to investigate bandwidth caps, so sayeth Wired’s Epicenter blog.
