The other day, Time Warner Cable used Business Week to announce that they were going to be expanding their metered billing trial -- which we first reported back in January of '08 -- into four additional markets. The trial imposes caps as low as 5GB on Time Warner Cable's existing tiers of service, charging users an additional $1 per each gigabyte consumed. In the report, company CEO Glenn Britt claimed flat-rate pricing was not "viable," an argument they have no data to support, and one which we've repeatedly refuted.

"We've shared our analysis of our data. We're not going to share raw data...just not going to happen. -Time Warner Cable, on proving, via hard data, their claim that flat-rate pricing is not a viable business model

While the original metered billing announcment was met with scattered grumbling among the technorati, user reaction to the expansion announcement was broad, swift and brutal.

A number of user-created websites quickly popped up urging customers to contact Time Warner Cable in protest. Users of news aggregation systems like Redditt and Digg screamed bloody murder. Website commentary wasn't much kinder, most sites classifying the move as unnecessary, anti-competitive, and a threat to content innovation.

Meanwhile, Time Warner Cable public relations employees on social networking website Twitter (like spokesman Alex Dudley and PR coordinator Mariam Asmar) have been bombarded with complaints. Armed with only talking points about how charging users more money for less service is an act of philanthropy and fairness -- last we checked they weren't faring particularly well.

Still, these front-line warriors deserve credit for very politely taking the brunt of the backlash directly on the chin, while the executives who thought the idea up spent the week wining and dining one another at industry trade shows like CTIA in Las Vegas or The Cable Show in Washington, DC.

While many American consumers may not know what a gigabyte is, they apparently understand enough to be skeptical when an already very profitable company starts complaining about not having the necessary resources to afford (relatively) inexpensive upgrades. They also understand that being charged a dollar per gigabyte for bandwidth the carrier pays pennies for is directly tied to the desire to protect TV revenues from Internet video.

The company continues to request your input, which can be (politely) delivered by contacting your local Time Warner Cable office, or by e-mailing the carrier at realideas@twcable.com.