Time Warner Cable has been under harsh criticism from consumers and politicians alike to stop their proposed tired internet pricing trials. The trials were to be started in Rochester, N.Y., Greensboro, N.C., Austin, Texas, and San Antonio, Texas. The trials would have seen users currently paying about $40 for unlimited bandwidth forced to pay $150 per month for the same service.

Time Warner has now announced that it is not going to be adding the new areas to its metered pricing trial. However, customers in Beaumont, Texas who are already paying for metered access will continue to do so.

Time Warner CEO Glenn Britt said in a statement, "It is clear from the public response over the last two weeks that there is a great deal of misunderstanding about our plans to roll out additional tests on consumption-based billing."

Much of the consumer protest surrounding the metered trials was in the Rochester, N.Y. area reports the AP. In that area, U.S. Rep. Eric Massa had said he was preparing legislation that would ban metered billing of internet access.

Timothy Karr from Free Press said, "We're glad to see Time Warner Cable's price-gouging scheme collapse in the face of consumer opposition. Let this be a lesson to other Internet service providers looking to head down a similar path."

Under the Time Warner metered plan, consumers would have paid at least an extra $1 per gigabyte over the miniscule monthly allotments provided. Streaming video would have been the hardest hit internet service under the tiered pricing plan. One gigabyte of data equals about three hours of streaming video.

Karr added, "Consumers are not going to stand idly by as companies try to squeeze their use of the internet."