NEW YORK:
Time Warner Cable's PR staff is conducting blog outreach for its test
of an Internet usage-based pricing plan.
The cable company's test rates range from $29.95 per month
for service with a 5-gigabyte cap to $54.90 a month for 15-megabit-per-second
downloads with a 40-gigabyte limit, according to a report by the Associated Press. Time Warner Cable will not apply the rates to the first two months of
the trial, which will begin June 5 in the Beaumont,
TX area with new subscribers.
Eight members of Time Warner Cable's internal staff are
engaging bloggers, mostly in the technology and consumer verticals, said Alex
Dudley, VP of PR, who added that the company communications staff is also
analyzing online coverage.
Time Warner Cable is stressing that high download rates would
not apply to all Internet users, Dudley said.
“No matter what ISP you're talking about, the fact is that
it is a very small percentage of users who [use] a very high amount of the
network's capacity…at some level, there's going to have to be some network
management,” he said. “We're not doing this as a panacea; it's just a test, but
we thought it was important to be forthright about what we were up to, what the
plan entails, and what the new specifics are.”
Time Warner Cable initiated media outreach by pitching the
Associated Press with the story, Dudley said.
Bloggers on Web sites such as GigaOm.com,
GlobalGeekNews.com, and SiliconAlleyInsider panned the
metered Web usage plan.
Time Warner Cable anticipated a mixed reaction from the
press and blogosphere, Dudley said.
“Some [bloggers] were upset, and some were reasonable about
it, and that's about what we expected,” he said.