Cable’s rush to meter the Internet long after such metering means the cable companies that need content to make their broadband customers happy will damage the media companies trying to provide.

It’s like watching Wile E. Coyote build some type of gadget that you know is going to explode messily. We wonder if anyone working at Comcast, Time Warner Cable, or AT&T actually attended any classes on negotiation, or if they really prefer detonating the floor out from under their customer relationship.

The headlong plunge to stick consumers with metered cable broadband comes as adoption of the Internet continues to widen in appeal and scope. The New York Times repeated the typical cable line, about a teensy minority of users hogging half the bandwidth available.

Naturally they assume this activity means movies and songs are pouring into hard drives as fast as Hollywood and the music industry releases them. That may or may not be the case.

Online video plays also take up some bandwidth. Quite frankly, we’re laugh-out-loud amused at Time Warner Cable considering this. Their counterparts at AOL, who have been working on getting more video out of Warner’s vaults for online viewing, may see work on that going for naught if bandwidth limits keep people from viewing it.

We would like to think there’s some way to switch heavy users to higher priced packages more in line with their network usage, rather than bandwidth metering for everyone. Once the caps left years ago, real usage of the Internet grew dramatically. Going back to a time where people watched meters constantly doesn’t appeal to us.

Posted on Monday, June 16th, 2008 at 10:50 am. Permalink