Time Warner customers in Beaumont, Texas are the first lab rats for a TW plan to meter Net usage by residential customers and charge an additional fee for heavy use. How heavy is heavy? That is the rub.

While Comcast is kicking around a 250-gig monthly cap before surcharges kick in, TW is reportedly looking something on the order of 50 gigs. In other words, woefully short for users who are actually using their broadband pipe for broadband applications — like media streaming or online gaming.

TW, like all cable guys, desperately wants to tier Net usage and charge anyone $1 per gig who goes over their plan. Wonder if TW will be rebating $1 per gig on the universe who underuse? Ha!

Time Warner is already in my crosshairs for foisting an utterly inept “upgrade” on their DVR customers — in-house software that looks state-of-the-art for 1993. Customers are simply paying too much for this kind of junk.

Now broadband tiering threatens to kill the very applications that make people want to have broadband to begin with. Great plan, fellows. I’d pre-emptively complain to our local cable czarina Doris Boris but she seems to be AWOL.