Who Likes Big Cable? No One.

We love the DirecTV ad mocking big cable. You know, the one where the fictional cable company decides to raise prices because it determines that people have disposable income. I love the line that goes something like, "I learned that in business school ... when I read about business school in a book."

With that in mind, today's post ... So much for unlimited broadband access. Time Warner Cable is testing a plan to limit the amount of downloads before users -- already paying a monthly fee of at least $29.95 -- get charged extra. Not surprising, but the bloggers plain don't like this move. Nothing goes over worse in bad economic times than cable companies trying to raise prices. People already dislike the cable companies -- we wrote about this in our last post.

If this is rolled out widely, Time Warner may come to regret this move. Verizon and other telcos have plans to move in on the cable world and finally deliver some level of choice beyond satellite. This lack of unlimited service could be a real differentiator for Verizon in the marketplace. Look, it's just not a good idea to give consumers something and then abruptly take it away. That's why the DVR has not yet been overthrown by networks and advertisers. It got out there too quickly and now they need to figure out a way to solve the problem (free on-demand content with no fast-forwarding, for example) other than simply taking it away.