Internet service provider Time Warner Cable recently made customers an offer. In exchange for a discount of roughly $60 per year on their home Internet service, subscribers could opt for a new service plan that capped their data at 30 gigabytes each billing period. While the prospect of saving money on steep monthly cable bills is certainly appealing, TWC customers have spoken loud and clear: No, we don’t want data caps.
During the recent Deutsche Bank Media, Internet and Telecom conference in Florida, Time Warner Cable chairman and CEO Rob Marcus said that practically no subscribers took the ISP up on its offer for cheaper service with a data cap. Light Reading reports that Marcus confirmed the number of subscribers now on its new use-based plan currently sits “in the thousands.”
Time Warner Cable serves approximately 11 million customers in the United States, so the number of customers willing to forgo unlimited broadband service for a $5 monthly discount represents well under 1% of the ISP’s subscriber base.
There’s still some bad news though — Marcus and his company have no intention of giving up on data caps.
“Despite the extremely low uptake rate, Marcus said he thinks there’s an important principle for the company to establish: The more data customers use, the more money they should pay,” Light Reading’s Mary Silbey wrote.
Of course should Comcast’s proposed $45 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable be approved by regulators, we can look forward to a massive entity that has even more leverage to apply should it decide to keep pressing data caps.
