For half a decade Comcast customers complained about being booted from the network for consuming too much bandwidth, though Comcast never stated just how much bandwidth was too much. Only last October did Comcast replace their "invisicap" with the clear 250GB cap (insiders told us overages were considered). The new cap was imposed in part because the FCC and the State of Florida put pressure on Comcast to be more transparent about their network management practices.

Last week, while consumers were busy telling Time Warner Cable they didn't want to be billed by the byte, several cable executives breathlessly praised the company for their transparency. Apparently that transparency only went so far. Though the metered billing trials have been temporarily shelved, Stop the Cap tells us that three users in Austin are suddenly facing service disconnections for not-at-all-clear bandwidth hoggery:Like Comcast of old, Time Warner Cable wouldn't tell Ryan what the exact limit was. If this is part of Time Warner Cable's new user education process, we appear to be moving backward, not forward. If you've been a long time Broadband Reports reader, you know that Time Warner Cable has a history of experimenting with caps long before this recent metered billing kerfuffle, as our report from back in 2003 highlights.

Such limits differed from market to market based on regional congestion, but were at least clear where they existed. This letter to a Nebraska Time Warner Cable customer is nearly six years old, but even it referenced a very clear 15GB limit. This new invisicap consumer education process may not sit well with either the FCC or State Attorneys General, who've made it clear that if you're going to limit users, it must be clear.

Time Warner Cable could have simply imposed a 250GB limit to curb network abusers, a path trailblazed by Comcast. Instead they decided to go right for the prize of low caps and high overages. When their nose was slapped by an angry public and populism-surfing politicians, they begrudgingly headed back to the PR drawing board. In the interim they decided it was a good idea to impose nebulous network limits to clarify things for users?

Certainly this all makes sense from within the halls of Time Warner Cable HQ, where the belief is that consumers are just being difficult if they can't see the genius in charging users $2 per gigabyte on the eve of HD video. You can almost hear CEO Glenn Britt and COO Landel Hobbs complaining that last week consumers were angry about clear caps, and this week they're angry about unclear caps. The insufferable insolence of the American consumer.