While Comcast and Time Warner Cable are taking the heat for merely experimenting with methods to meter subscribers’ data consumption and charge for usage above usage caps, Rogers is on the verge of implementing such a system company-wide.
The company is currently in the middle of a three-month period in which it is metering its subscribers’ usage and providing individual on-screen messages, via technology provided by Perftech, that notify each customer of their consumption rates.
With the expectation that three months worth of usage metering will accustom subscribers to the notion, Rogers is about to start enforcing usage caps in July.
Charges for overages will start with the highest charges for the lowest-speed tiers ($5 per additional gigabyte for the 512 Kbps tier) and go lower for the highest-speed users ($1.25/GB for the 18 Mbps tier).
The graduated charges clearly encourage users to move to the tier that is most appropriate for their usage.
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