Live in Beaumont, Texas? Use the internet? Well, you’re fucked now.

Time Warner is doing a pilot program there with a new internet pricing model. And it’s a doozy.

$54.90/mo gets you an allowance of 40gb of transfer. That’s just straight internet, no attached cable, VoIP or phone service. If you start tacking on services, the cap gets lifted. The new pricing model is a direct attack on “high consumption” customers who are slowing down TW’s networks. You know, people who use P2P clients, or people who invested in things like AppleTV or Netflix’s new set-top box. A HD movie over AppleTV is 4gb. Watch 10 movies in a month and your internet gets switched off.

Comcast is apparently prepping a similar model, but with a 250gb cap instead. That is more reasonable, but still it doesn’t make me happy. I do a fair amount of business over the internet that requires me to ship whole websites, large media files or hi-rez photography through these company’s networks. And I do it all from home. I’m already paying roughly $120/mo for broadband internet, digital cable and a DVR box from Comcast. I don’t know if I could afford them capping my bandwidth, or making me pay more for it.

Source here.