Higginbotham: $24.59 to Watch “Twilight”

Twilight DVD box

A lot of people have been pointing out the absurdity of the TWC plan by providing concrete examples of how much various activities would cost. I’ve been doing that too. In most cases we’ll take the $1/GB cap overage charge and calculate the costs for watching a movie, playing a game, etc.

One possible critique of this analysis might note that these charges won’t apply to people that stay within their cap. You only get hit by overage charges when you go beyond the allotted amount. (I don’t totally agree with that critique. I think people want to know this information to assess the cost risk when they bust their tier.)

Today, Stacey Higgenbotham posted a shrewd analysis that asks what are the costs for people that stay within their caps. That is, she calculates the cost per gigabyte for people who do not run into overage charges.

The results there are even more disturbing:

Time Warner’s price per GB for its proposed tiers ranges from 75 cents to $15 (unless you max out the overage fees on the 100 GB per month tier and default into unlimited service for $150). This means the bandwidth for “Twilight” would cost between $2.85 and $20.60. After adding in the $3.99 rental fee, the evening at home costs between $6.84 and $24.59.

This analysis shows that a TWC customer could pay as much as $24.59 for a single viewing of “Twilight”. This compares to $5.36 for AT&T, $4.64 to $6.19 for Comcast, and $3.99 (the cost of the movie alone) for Verizon (the only “optical fiber to the home” solution surveyed).

Read the full article here: The Metered Broadband Math: As Much As $24.59 to Rent “Twilight”

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