Time Warner begins testing Pay-Per-Download service

Forget about flat fees for unlimited monthly services or downloads. Time Warner, the parent company of AOL, is considering a pay-per-download service and has begun testing it with consumers.

by Kristina Knight

The service charges users on a per-download basis for things like ringtones, music, movies or other video clips. The change is targeted at the 5% of broadband users who download many, many clips, songs or ringtones each month according to a Time Warner rep.

"Ninety-five percent of our users would not be the extreme users who are driving this," said Time Warner spokesman Alex Dudley. "We want the network to maximize returns for all of our customers."

For new Time Warner customers, four different plans will be offered. Users can choose from 5, 10, 20 or 40 gigabyte plans; any time users go over their monthly plan they will have overage charges. So far Time Warner has not placed a price on the individual tiers for the plans. Testing of the pay-per-download service will begin in Texas later this year.

Several online organizations have had problems with traffic to download sites and have suffered from "illegal" downloads. This plan could circumvent those losses, however, the system isn't without its faults. Some say these companies should focus on their own infrastructure so that they can better handle the number of visitors and downloads rather than making users choose between flat and per-download fees.