Heavy users may pay more for Internet

Some people use the Internet simply to check e-mail and look up phone numbers. Others are online all day, downloading big video and music files. Should they pay the same price for access?

For years they have, with subscribers sharing a buffet of all-you-can-download Internet access, regardless of how much they consumed. But now three of the country's largest Internet service providers are threatening to clamp down on their most active subscribers by placing monthly limits on their online activity.

One of them, Time Warner Cable, began a trial of "Internet metering" in one Texas city early this month, asking customers to select a monthly plan and pay surcharges when they exceed their bandwidth limit. The idea is that people who use the network more heavily should pay more, the way they do for water, electricity, or, in many cases, cell phone minutes.

That same week, Comcast said that it would expand on a strategy it uses to manage Internet traffic: slowing down the connections of the heaviest users, so-called bandwidth hogs, at peak times.

AT&T also said Thursday that limits on heavy use were inevitable and that it was considering pricing based on data volume. "Based on current trends, total bandwidth in the AT&T network will increase by four times over the next three years," the company said in a statement.

All three companies say that placing caps on broadband use will ensure fair access for all users.

Internet metering is a throwback to the days of dial-up service, but at a time when video and interactive games are becoming popular, the experiments could have huge implications for the future of the Web.

Millions of people are moving online to watch movies and television shows, play multiplayer video games and talk over videoconference with family and friends. And media companies are trying to get people to spend more time online: the Disneys and NBCs of the world keep adding television shows and movies to their Web sites, giving consumers convenient entertainment that soaks up a lot of bandwidth.

Moreover, companies with physical storefronts, like Blockbuster, are moving toward digital delivery of entertainment. And new distributors of online content -- think YouTube -- are relying on an open data spigot to make their business plans work.

Fewer downloads likely

Critics of the bandwidth limits say that metering and capping network use could hold back the inevitable convergence of television, computers and the Internet.

The Internet "is how we deliver our shows," said Jim Louderback, chief executive of Revision3, a three-year-old media company that runs what it calls a television network on the Web. "If all of a sudden our viewers are worried about some sort of a broadband cap, they may think twice about downloading or watching our shows."

Even if the caps are far above the average users' consumption, their mere existence could cause users to reduce their time online. Just ask people who carefully monitor their monthly allotments of cell phone minutes and text messages.

"As soon as you put serious uncertainty as to cost on the table, people's feeling of freedom to predict cost dries up and so does innovation and trying new applications," Vint Cerf, the chief Internet evangelist for Google, who is often called the "father of the Internet," said in an e-mail message.

But the companies imposing the caps say that their actions are only fair.

Time Warner also frames the issue in financial terms: The broadband infrastructure needs to be improved, it says, and maybe metering could pay for the upgrades. So far its trial is limited to new subscribers in Beaumont, Texas, a city of roughly 110,000.

In that trial, new customers can buy plans with a 5-gigabyte cap, a 20-gigabyte cap or a 40-gigabyte cap. Prices for those plans range from $30 to $50. Above the cap, customers pay $1 a gigabyte. Plans with higher caps come with faster service.

"Average customers are way below the caps," said Kevin Leddy, executive vice president for advanced technology at Time Warner Cable.

Time Warner would not reveal how many gigabytes an average customer uses, saying only that 95 percent of customers use under 40 gigabytes each in a month.

That means that 5 percent of customers use more than 50 percent of the network's overall capacity, the company said.