I didn’t hold the highest opinion of Time Warner Cable before, but lately they’ve sunk to a new low.  They want to start introducing bandwidth caps on users but they can’t do this for existing customers who signed up for unlimited internet.  So what do they do?  They offer a new “deal” where you can get cable, internet, and digital phone service for a “locked-in rate” for a year.  Buried in the fine print is the fact that you’d also be signing up for a bandwidth cap.  Even worse, the afore-mentioned locked-in rate requires you to sign a contract for a year of service.  So if you found out after the fact that your bandwidth was capped, you’d have to pay a $150 early-termination fee to get out of the contract.

What is even more ridiculous is that the limit is set at 20GB per month.  When I first read about the 20GB limit, I thought surely that is per day.  That I could live with.  The only way you’re likely to use 20GB a day is if you’re downloading torrents constantly (which I still say is none of their business—courts have already ruled that the ISP is not responsible for what users do on their network).  But 20GB a month is very easy to reach even if you’re not pirating anything, especially if you watch TV online, or if you use VOIP (i.e. Vonage, Skype).  It’s almost as if Time Warner’s internet department has some financial incentive to limit competition from Time Warner’s cable TV and digital phone departments!  No, that’s just crazy talk.