David Lazarus: Time Warner's painful pricing plan

L.A. Times consumer columnist David Lazarus warns that some Time Warner Cable customers soon could be charged as much as $150 a month for online access.

The big price tag will hit what Time Warner considers to be heavy Internet users in a test this summer in New York and North Carolina, with other states to follow. The new "consumption-based billing" system is supposed to address the looming problem of capacity shortages because of ever-growing Internet use. AT&T and Comcast are exploring similar moves.

But some experts see tiered pricing as a money grab by the gatekeepers to the Net. Movie downloaders and other heavy users should pay more than people who surf lightly, but $150 a month seems pretty steep.

Comments

[Oleg]

Tiered pricing is nothing but a way to raise prices. I live in a city that after many years of being raped by service providers, started a community owned internet, phone and cable service. The internet, cable and phone service are about par for industry cost wise. As far as the internet we have unlimited amount of usage, the only tiers are speed wise and the lowest is faster then many cable providers. The main reason is that when it was installed it used fiber optics not co-ax. There is no limit on what fiber can hold, this is one of the main reasons that many cable and others do not want to switch to fiber. They would not be able to tier the cost according to space. I live in Burlington Vermont if anyone would like to contact our provider it’s called Burlington Telecom. I wish the rest of you good luck on the tier pricing that I will never have to worry about or pay.