Hot on the heels of my previous post, it looks like Time Warner has decided to back off of its metered billing initiative nationwide, at least for the time being. From the press release:
Time Warner Cable Chief Executive Officer Glenn Britt said, “It is clear from the public response over the last two weeks that there is a great deal of misunderstanding about our plans to roll out additional tests on consumption based billing. As a result, we will not proceed with implementation of additional tests until further consultation with our customers and other interested parties, ensuring that community needs are being met. While we continue to believe that consumption based billing may be the best pricing plan for consumers, we want to do everything we can to inform our customers of our plans and have the benefit of their views as part of our testing process.”
Chalk up yet another victory for the netroots!
As I mentioned in my previous post, in recent months, netroots activism has proven increasingly effective in resisting flawed technology mandates and misguided corporate policies. If you called or emailed Time Warner to register your opposition to the caps, helped organize one of the planned protests or jumped ship all together, you owe yourself a big pat on the back. Clearly it was the actions of customers like you that made it clear to Time Warner that its broadband capping plan was both unreasonable and unwise from a business perspective.
Given the tone of the company’s response, however, it’s clear that Time Warner hasn’t given up completely on the idea of metered billing. We’ll have to remain vigilant and if the company attempts to introduce an equally flawed strategy later on down the line, we’ll have to give them a piece of our mind yet again. As for the company’s opposition to net neutrality, I’m going to have to assume that that still stands, at least until I see a press release stating otherwise. Really though, Time Warner, feel free to surprise me twice in one afternoon.