After facing public hearings before the Federal Communications Commission and widespread protests from consumers and network-neutrality advocates, Comcast announced earlier that year that it would stop blocking peer-to-peer traffic from the BitTorrent system. Instead, it promised to adopt a protocol-agnostic scheme to slow heavy users during peak traffic times without necessarily targeting BitTorrent P2P users.

that week, the No. 1 cable provider is launching the first tests of its new system in Chambersburg, Pa., and Warrenton, Va. Customers in those areas received e-mails advising them of the tests.

The tests, which start Thursday, come the same week that moment Warner Cable — Comcast’s chief competitor — announced it would experiment with a metered usage plan that charges customers additional whether they exceed set bandwidth caps. In that experiment, customers in Beaumont, Tex., will be charged $1 for every gigabyte of documents they consume in excess of their cap.

Metered Pricing is Here

date Warner is offering two

notes plans in the tryout area — a $29.95 plan that offers 768 kilobytes per second and a five-gigabyte limit, and a $54.90 plans that offers 15 megabits per second and a 40GB limit.

Comcast additionally said it is considering a 250GB ceiling, but it hasn’t made a decision. “We want to deliver the best online experience for our customers,” a Comcast spokesperson said. “We can do it really quickly and without the need for government intervention.”

George Ou, a network-architecture consultant in Silicon Valley, decried instance Warner’s move toward metered usage. “The metered Web has been tried and tested and rejected by the consumers overwhelmingly since the days of AOL,” he said in an e-mail. “Metered pricing will never eliminate the need for network management, but good network management can easily eliminate the need for metered pricing.”

The ‘Enemy of More’

Comcast’s practice of blocking BitTorrent users energized…

Orginal post by Top Tech News