Charging by the Byte to Curb Internet Traffic: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

One of them, Time Warner Cable, began a trial of “Internet metering” in one Texas city early this month, asking customers to select a monthly plan and pay surcharges when they exceed their bandwidth limit. The idea is that people who use the network more heavily should pay more, the way they do for water, electricity, or, in many cases, cellphone minutes.

That same week, Comcast said that it would expand on a strategy it uses to manage Internet traffic: slowing down the connections of the heaviest users, so-called bandwidth hogs, at peak times.

AT&T also said Thursday that limits on heavy use were inevitable and that it was considering pricing based on data volume. “Based on current trends, total bandwidth in the AT&T network will increase by four times over the next three years,” the company said in a statement.

Morons. As genes pointed out earlier, consumers hate these metered plans. They get raped on them enough by the cell phone companies, and if they try it with the internet, theere will be a consumer rebellion. If that occurs, the next thing the big providers hear will be all the politicians they think they’ve bought suddenly talking about new regulations to prevent “windfall profits” and “price gouging” by “Big Internet.”

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