Time Warner Internet Tests New Plan

Time Warner has chosen Beaumont to test a new internet pricing plan that went into effect Thursday.

It could be expanded to include customers across the nation.

New subscribers and people who change their internet options will be charged based on how much bandwidth they use.

The categories range from 5 gigabytes to 40 gigabytes of download usage a month for residential customers.

You can look at bandwidth usage the way you look at cell phone minutes.

We purchase a set amount of minutes, and if we go over, we have to pay extra fees.

A Time Warner spokeswoman says bandwidth is an issue across the world, and the new plan the company is testing in Beaumont is a way to make heavy users pay for big downloads, and also a way to keep the system from slowing down.

Time Warner says people in the lower tier, using five gigabytes a month, would be able to send and receive more than 300,000 e-mails and download about 15 hours of digital movies before reaching their limit. That would cost on average about 30 dollars a month.

The "standard" level features 20 gigabytes a month for about 55 dollars. That level allows you to send or receive more than 11,000 pictures and download about 60 hours of digital movies a month.

Those at the higher level would be able to download about 11,000 songs and play more than 1,300 hours of online games a month. That amount of bandwidth costs nearly 65 dollars a month.

Time Warner says a small percentage of users take up about half of the bandwidth.

Ira Wilsker hosts the "My Computer" show on KLVI Radio.

He says the plan may force heavy users to look for alternatives to Time Warner internet service.

But he says it should not have a major impact on the average user.

"For the typical internet user it will not likely hit those caps. When people say I just want to read email and surf the web, I'm not into peer to peer file sharing, or downloading DVD's, for those, they're not going to see any different and it's not going to cost extra. It's only heavy, what we call, power users, that are going to hit those caps," says Ira Wilsker, host of KLVI's "My Computer" Show.

Wilsker says people who are buying convertor boxes for streaming and instant video downloads may see a problem too.

Time Warner says it wants feedback on the new plan.

Customers are asked to give that feedback through their usage tracking website.