Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past week, you’ve no doubt heard that Time Warner is expanding it’s use of bandwidth caps into additional markets as an expanded test for future billing models. Chief Operating Officer of TWC, Landel Hobbs, has released an updated press release outlining specifics on the levels of the tiered bandwidth speeds and prices.

Limited package for “lite users”: 1GB/month @ 768Kb/128Kb for $15/month
RR Lite: 10GB
RR Basic: 20GB
RR Standard: 40GB
RR Turbo: 60GB
RR Turbo 100: 100GB @ 10Mb/1Mb for $75/month

Overages for the limited lite will be $2/GB while all other levels will be $1/GB. The strangest part of the whole pricing strategy is that Hobbs said that the capping would in fact be capped at $75 which means that that Turbo 100 package is essentially unlimited usage once you hit that $75 in overages mark. $150 for unlimited internet? Pass. Furthermore, Hobbs says, and I quote, “That means that for $150 per month customers could have virtually unlimited usage at Turbo speeds.” Please quantify virtually for me Mr. Hobbs.

One of my favorite bloggers, Bill Harris, has a 2 part post about this. It predates the above details, but it sure does a great job of uncovering the real motive to the tiered pricing structure. Lara Crigger over at Gamers with Jobs has a similar post that crunches some real world numbers and I’ve got to admit that it’s quite scary how quickly you’ll take a flying leap past your bandwidth cap for even the highest plan with Time Warner.

Regardless of your usage, I think we can all agree that this is going to have a grave affect on the way we use our gaming consoles today. Are you a TWC customer and if so will you be able to afford an increase to $75-150/month just for your internet?