On Thursday, duration Warner Cable will start analyzing a new pricing plan that caps bandwidth usage. Kevin Leddy, duration Warner Cable’s executive vice president, said the plan will be launched as a trial in Beaumont, Texas, and will consist of several tiers. The first tier, at $29.95 monthly, will be a relatively slow 768 kilobits per second with a 5GB monthly cap, while a plan at $54.90 per month will offer 15 megabits per second and a 40GB cap.

Both downloads and uploads count toward the monthly total. Overages will be charged at $1 a gigabyte.

Only New Customers

instance Warner has an estimated 90,000 customers in the area, and only new customers will be offered the tiers. With some users exchanging huge, media-based files like video, some other cable companies have additionally considered caps. For instance, Comcast, the largest cable company in the United States, has reportedly said it may cap usage at 250 gigabytes per

The experiment comes as consumers have grown used to unlimited Net usage. But Larry Hettick, an analyst with industry research firm Current Analysis, said the current problem for Web service providers is mostly created by five percent of users, while the rest have usage patterns within expectations. Those five percent, he added, are frequently downloading or uploading huge files.

Hettick noted that providers have previously said, in effect, that their policy is “unlimited, within reason,” and soon after kicked off those few who go unreasonably beyond expected usage. “From a marketing point of view,” he said, “it’s probably a better approach.”

He added that it will be interesting to see how users react to that experiment, as they have become accustomed to unlimited bandwidth, and the phone market is going the other way — toward unlimited use for a flat price. “Personally,” said Hettick, who sometimes works at…

Orginal post by Top Tech News