Time Warner to alter fee for Road Runner
KATE PERRY • STAFF WRITER • APRIL 2, 2009
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The days of flat-fee Internet charges are dwindling if your provider is Time Warner Cable. Prepare to pay by the gig.
Starting this summer, the company will ask customers to review their usage and pick a plan from 5 gigabytes to 100 gigabytes. If customers use more gigs than their plan allows, they'll have to pay overages. The new billing system will roll out this fall.
The 5-gigabyte plan will start at about $29.95 a month, Time Warner spokesman Alex Dudley said Wednesday.
A majority of Time Warner's customers currently have the standard tier plan, which costs about $49.99. The soon-to-come 20-gigabyte plan will cost about the same and allow customers similar Internet usage.
The new payment plan will be more equitable, Dudley said. Now, a small portion of customers use a massive amount of the company's bandwidth — the 25 percent who use the most bandwidth consume 100 times more than the 25 percent who use the least. With the current flat-rate plan, everyone pays for the upgrades to Time Warner's system that the heavy users' habits require.
With the new plan in place, those who want to use a lot of bandwidth will have to pay for it.
Dudley said increased Internet usage across the board, especially video downloading, has required the company to constantly improve its broadband infrastructure, something that will continue in the future.
"Our customers used 50 percent more this year than they did last year, and we expect them to use 50 percent more next year and the year after that," he said.
The good news is, most customers won't pay more, Dudley said. The plan is already in place in Beaumont, Texas, and 86 percent of the customers there pay the same as they did with the flat rate. Of those who pay more, the average monthly overages are about $19, he said.
Beaumont, San Antonio and Austin, Texas, Greensboro, N.C., and Rochester were selected to be part of the usage-based payment trial because they represent a diverse collection of Time Warner users, Dudley said. The results of the trial will determine if or when the company rolls out the payment restructuring nationwide.
KPERRY@DemocratandChronicle.com
