Starting this Thursday, Time Warner Cable will stop selling unlimited Internet service to new customers in Beaumont, Texas [1]. Instead, the company will charge a set fee for a set amount of use and then charge $1 for each additional gigabyte.

About 5 percent of Internet users apparently take up 50 percent of the capacity on TW lines. The company thinks surcharges for heavy users are the fairest way to finance network improvements.

But metered Internet service may provide another benefit for Time Warner and another vocal proponent, the cable giant Comcast. It could stop people from canceling their cable service and bringing shows straight from the Internet to their TVs.

Those who mainly do Web surfing or e-mail have little reason to pay attention to the traffic caps: a gigabyte is about 3,000 Web pages, or 15,000 e-mails without attachments. But those who download movies or TV shows will want to pay attention. A standard-definition movie can take up 1.5 gigabytes, and a high-definition movie can be 6 to 8 gigabytes.

In other words, customers who pay for their Internet usage won't save any money by dropping TV service and relying on the Internet for their entertainment.

I've heard several people advance this theory since Time Warner began talking about metered Internet a few months back. They always note that caps are more popular with cable companies (which sell more TV than Internet) than they are with phone companies (which sell more Internet than TV).

Sounds plausible, I'll admit, but another recent announcement from Time Warner seems to argue that the company is embracing Internet video -- at least to some degree.

The company said last week that it would release a device that makes it far easier to get videos from the Web to the TV [2].

"Right now it's pretty hard to get Internet stuff on your TV," [TW CEO Glenn] Britt said at the Sanford C. Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference in New York.

"We're actually going to have equipment we make available to subscribers," he said. "It's actually going to be a new wireless cable modem that will allow you to network everything in your house."

What do the two announcements mean when considered together? I'm not sure, but I'm curious.