Time Warner Cable, Charter Set Internet-Usage Cap Plans

Time Warner Cable will expand a test of usage-based Internet billing to four additional markets, while Charter Communications has confirmed that starting next week it will impose usage limits on most of its broadband users. Time Warner Cable chief operating officer Landel Hobbs, on the operator's earnings call Wednesday, said the operator will expand its "consumption-based billing" beyond the small Beaumont, Texas, system where it initiated a test last year. "With Congress poised to spend billions getting Americans connected to a better, faster Internet," said S. Derek Turner, research director of Free Press, "we're concerned that caps discourage Internet adoption and stifle economic growth. In general, we're wary of any roadblock to the development of applications and services that drive experimentation and innovation online. We need to be expanding our digital economy, not shrinking it."