Time Warner Cable responds to bandwidth cap complaints with price cap plan

In a statement this morning, Time Warner COO Landel Hobbs announced a $150-per-month pricing tier for high volume users, which he says is meant to stem user complaints over Time Warner's tests of capped bandwidth usage.

"We've heard the passionate feedback and we've taken action to address our customers' concerns," according to Hobbs.

In a controversial early trial in Beaumont, Texas, Time Warner has been charging customers between $29.95 and $54.90 a month based on data consumption and connection speed. Customers have then been charged an extra $1 for each gigabyte over their plan limit.

The ISP had planned to use the same general price structure in an expanded trial of capped bandwidth usage in the cities of Rochester, N.Y., Greensborough, N.C., and San Antonio and Austin, Texas.

But now, in the four new test cities, high volume users will be offered a 100 GB Road Runner Turbo package for $75 per month with speeds of 10 Mbps downstream / 1 Mbps upstream. The Turbo package also calls for a $1 per GB overage charge. But all overage charges will be capped at $75 per month, so that for $150 per month, usage will be virtually unlimited.

Time Warner will also test a pricing tier for light Internet users offering 1 GB per month for $15 at speeds of 768 / 128 Kbps, with an overage fee of $2 per extra GB.

In addition, the ISP is stepping up the bandwidth tier sizes included in all existing packages to 10, 20, 40 and 60 GB for its Road Runner Lite, Basic, Standard and Turbo packages, while retaining the same pricing. Time Warner will also charge overage fees of $1 per GB per month on those plans.

Trials of the new pricing tiers announced today are slated to start in Rochester and Greensborough in August, and in San Antonio and Austin in October.