There's an astounding amount of news that crosses our virtual desks here at Mashable. Some of it is actual news, mounds of start ups, some silliness, and some... well, some that just make you bang your head into your keyboard repeatedly as you wonder what a company was thinking.
Time Warner Cable has come to the astounding conclusion that they will be testing a change to how they bill their broadband cable customers sometime this year. The lucky residents of Beaumont, Texas will be the sacrificial lambs test subjects for their new "metered" system of billing. Translation? The more you download, the more they'll charge you.
Considering the amount broadband access already costs in this country, not to mention the difference in speeds with the rest of the world, this is just seemingly outrageous to me. I pay $63 a month for 8 mbs, while I know people in Japan who pay $39 a month for 62 mbs, and in both cases, it is unlimited downloading. Citizens of the United States are already being taken for a ride on the Information Super Highway in a rickety old car with no emission controls, but now they want to throw speed bumps in our way.
What is Time Warner thinking? Is it just unmitigated greed? Is it a true need to cover an increase in bandwidth usage? Admittedly, everyone and their brother seems to be dipping into the bandwidth pool as of late: Joost, Skype, Apple, bit torrents, they all are using up bandwidth at ever increasing rates.
Apparently Time Warner is just worried about truly heavy users, but what about the grandmother who gets a computer and watches her grandchildren over a Skype video chat every night? Is she going to receive a bill for a hundred or more dollars for exceeding her bandwidth because she didn't monitor it?