The original AP article on this story mentioned LARGER tiers and CHEAPER tiers, not smaller tiers.
quote:
Time Warner Cable spokesman Alex Dudley said his company's trial, in Beaumont, Texas, had shown that the system is capable of metering and billing accurately. It will soon be expanded to four more markets, for now undisclosed, to give the company a better understanding of how the system works.
The intent behind charging by the gigabyte is to have subscribers who use the Internet more pay for the upgrades necessary for the company to keep up with increasing traffic, Dudley said.
"It's clear to us that customers want online video, which requires substantial investment in the network," Dudley said. "We're willing to make that, and we're trying to find an equitable way to distribute the cost of that investment."
Dudley said a "small but vocal percentage" of users in Beaumont were unhappy with the amount of data they could use (the top tier is 40 gigabytes per month). The company plans to address that by introducing plans with larger monthly "buckets" of data, as well as cheaper ones for casual users.
TWC also took a 7.3 BILLION dollar loss this year:
quote:
In 2008, Time Warner Cable reported record cash flow, and the company increased its revenue in every service category, though growth rates decelerated as the year progressed, the recession worsened and competition ramped up. The company ended up experiencing operational losses in Q4 that wiped out financial gains from earlier in the year, leading to a fiscal-year loss of $7.3 billion.
During the frank and free-ranging Time Warner Cable Q4/FY 2008 conference call, TWC executives announced that they will be reducing headcount by 1,250 employees. CFO Rob Marcus said the company will be taking charges of $50 million to $100 million in 2009 associated with the separations.
So I'm not sure where people are seeing SMALLER tiers or lots of PROFITS at TWC...
