Anyone who regularly rents movies from the local video store is well aware of the need to return them within a strict period to avoid paying late rental fees. Now that there are several online movie rental services to choose from, it seems like one can finally avoid getting penalised. Well, while this may be the case for the mail based online DVD rental services such as Netflix, Blockbuster and so on, consumers who rent downloadable movies may in for a nasty surprise once they receive their next bill from their Internet service provider.
Time Warner announced that it is going to start testing a new Internet usage policy in Beaumont that would limit how much traffic one can accumulate over a period before they start getting changed for excessive usage. While they are still looking into what to charge, their spokesman Mr. Dudley said that they will probably be offering packages of between 5GB and 40GB per month, with the top plan being roughly the same price as its highest-speed service, which is around $50 to $60 per month. Other cable operators may also follow Time Warner's move later on.
What some consumers may not realise is that just because a HD rental may have a price tag of $4.99, does not mean that there are no other charges, at least until they get their next ISP bill. For example, Bell Canada charges up to C$7.50 per GB when a customer exceedsits monthly transfer allowance on one of its Internet packages, which means that if one of these customers has already gone over its quota and then rents a HD title, they may end up paying $30 for excessive usage, based on a 4GB HD movie download. As a result, the user would have been far better off purchasing the movie.
According to Mr. Dudley, half of its total bandwidth is consumed by just 5% of its customers, so these bandwidth limits will be intended to crack down on these heavy downloader’s. Apparently they are scared about the growing number of consumers turning to downloading and streaming movies online instead of traditionally watching these on DVD and on cable. However, while these excessive usage charges will effectively penalise consumers who rent a lot of downloadable movies each month, according to Mr. Dudley, these limits are actually aimed at people who use file sharing networks, especially those who download terabytes of data.
