On Thursday, Time Warner Cable will begin testing a metered Internet servicecharges users based on their usage, a plan that could spread to other Time Warner areas soon.

The trial markets currently include Rochester, New York, Beaumont, Texas, and Greensboro, North Carolina, which will see the new plans rolled out by August. Depending on the result of the trials, the services may roll out to Austin and San Antonio, Texas, by October.

According to Time Warner, internet usage and bandwidth consumption have gone up by about 40% per year. The company says they are investing in network upgrades and must continue to invest in the system.

Time Warner Cable has revised its proposal to cap Internet usage by increasing the amount of bandwith subscribers can consume.

Here are the changes:

• The company is offering a lower-speed, lower-priced option. The 1GB per month tier offers speeds of 768KB/128KB for $15 per month. Overages are $2 per GB per month.

• Road Runner Lite, Basic, Standard, and Turbo now have bandwith tier sizes of 10, 20, 40, and 60GB respectively. Overage charges are $1 per GB per month. The previous sizes were 5, 10, 20, and 40.

• There will be a 100GB Road Runner Turbo package for $75 per month with overage charges of $1 per GB per month.

• Overage charges will be capped at $75 per month. That means that for $150 per month customers could have virtually unlimited usage.

• Once the trial begins, customers will not be immediately billed for overages. They will first be provided two months of usage data to give them an opportunity to select a different package.

Time Warner pointed out in the release, they aren’t the only company raising rates, “Several other providers have instituted consumption based billing, including all major network providers in Canada and others in the U.K., New Zealand and elsewhere. In the U.S., AT&T has begun two consumption based billing trials and other providers including Comcast, Charter and Cox are using varying methods of monitoring and managing bandwidth consumption.”

Time Warner also stresses this new tiered billing is a trial and says customer feedback played a role in the new pricing model, “The feedback we’ve received from our customers has been very helpful.”

The strain and results of how this will affect access to Usenet Newsgroups by many TimeWarner Cable subscribers remain to be seen, but TigerUsenet will be following this story and its unfolding.