Time Warner Cable’s plan to charge higher prices to high-bandwidth customers – revealed in a leaked memo obtained by Broadband Reports – is better than blocking applications and throwing users off their networks. But it’s far from an ideal solution for the millions of people who use the Internet for a range of rich media applications.

Internet service providers like Comcast have claimed that the only way to manage their networks is to either disconnect customers that exceed undisclosed bandwidth limitations or secretly block applications like BitTorrent and Gnutella. Clearly, Time Warner Cable’s metered-pricing approach – which will have a trial run in Beaumont, Texas before a possible national rollout – is preferable to such deceptive practices. With metered pricing, consumers can still choose which Web sites they visit, which files they want to share, and what software they want. But it’s little more than a band-aid for our bigger broadband problems.

“Metered prices may chill innovation in cutting-edge applications because consumers will have a disincentive to use them,” explains Ben Scott of Free Press. “Viewed in the context of our long-term national goals for a world-class broadband infrastructure, telling consumers they must choose between blocking and metered pricing is a worrying development.”

Network providers should build better networks, and not squeeze users to pay more for infrastructure that’s a generation behind what’s available in parts of Europe and Asia. In Japan, for instance, consumers can purchase connections of 100 Megabits per second, for both uploads and downloads, for less than it costs to get only 6 Mbs (at best) download and 1 Mbs upload in the United States. France is also far ahead of the United States in providing high-speed Internet at affordable prices (see Free.fr ).

Until cable companies improve their networks, our global competitors will continue to have the edge in technological innovations. And consumers will continue to be deprived of affordable access to the content, software, and networks available abroad. Metering may not be as bad as blocking – but we can do much, much better.