Following on the heels of a similar offering by Time Warner Cable, Comcast has launched a new trial in Fresno that involves usage caps as low as 5GB a month on the company's Economy Plus broadband tier. The company's website and FAQ list the new plan as a "flexible data option," and as with Time Warner Cable's efforts -- users are promised a $5 discount off of their monthly bill if they're willing to have their broadband line capped at a paltry 5 gigabytes per month.

"The Flexible-Data Option is specifically designed for casual or light Internet users who typically use 5 GB of data or less a month," says Comcast. "It provides a $5 credit if your total monthly data usage is less than or equal to 5 GB per month. However, if your use is more than 5 GB of data in any given month, then you would not receive the $5 credit, and would be charged an additional $1 for each gigabyte of data used."

As I noted with Time Warner Cable's offering, the value provided here is virtually nonexistent. A $5 bill credit on a cable bill loaded with endlessly soaring fees isn't much savings to begin with, but even that limited savings evaporates quickly should you choose to actually use your broadband connection for anything more than perusing The Weather Channel.

Time Warner Cable and Comcast's voluntary options come after attempts at forcing users on to 5 GB capped plans didn't go over very well, Time Warner Cable's 2009 effort in particular seeing unprecedented public backlash and even public protest. So like the slowly boiled frog analogy, the cable operators hope they can slowly but surely get metered billing implemented if they just move glacially enough. The problem is that the option is so pathetic, very few are signing up for it.

We believe this monthly option is fair because it allows our eligible customers who use less data to now pay less. -Comcast

Cable operators have repeatedly and sometimes hysterically insisted they're simply looking to tinker with "creative" usage-based pricing, yet their best minds keep pushing forth metered plans that offer little to no value. That's because contrary to their claims, they're not actually interested in true usage-based plans, because tens of millions of their customers (like your grandma) would pay very little for the miniscule bandwidth they use.

Operators have used all manner of lies to try and foist metered billing onto consumers. Time Warner Cable executives claimed the company would financially collapse and the Internet would suffer brown outs if metered usage wasn't implemented. That "it's only fair" that heavy users pay more is another favorite line, even though the plans that are actually implemented result in higher rates for everyone.

Both Comcast and Time Warner Cable earnings reports highlight repeatedly that flat-rate pricing is perfectly profitable. Meanwhile the argument that congestion makes meters necessary has repeatedly been shown to be a myth. Residential fixed line bandwidth and hardware is consistently getting cheaper, and there should be no congestion on well-run fixed-line networks. The cable industry themselves have admitted caps aren't about congestion. Besides, the small, small fraction of users who actually are extreme consumers (like this guy) can simply be nudged toward business-class tiers.

The singular goal is and has always been to have everyone on metered plans so carriers can cash in on, and inhibit the growth of, Internet video options that will inevitably erode legacy cable TV revenues. As Susan Crawford recently warned, as the broadband market becomes more consolidated and less competitive (with AT&T and Verizon's inevitable exit from a huge swath of former DSL markets), the already low competitive risk involved in foisting all manner of expensive pricing options on American consumers diminishes.

A little more than a year ago Comcast announced that they would be eliminating the universal 250 GB cap on all Comcast subscriber lines to tinker with what they called "improved data management approaches." The suspension came as Comcast had been criticized for letting their own Xfinity Xbox 360 content bypass their cap. In addition to the new 5 GB option being tested in Fresno, the company has also been testing a 500 GB option in Nashville with $10 per gigabyte overages.

While the option for metered usage is voluntary for now, carriers have made it more than clear they'd like everyone on metered plans eventually. Where cable companies settle after these trials are completed will be dictated entirely by how much you as the consumer allow them to get away with.