Better hope this doesn't catch on, unless you like the idea of paying 2-3x what you pay now for service.

Bad news for online gamers and fans of downloading stuff in general: Time Warner is trying out a new internet service payment model where you pay for the amount of bandwidth you use instead of just paying a flat fee for access.

Time Warner Cable Inc said on Wednesday it is planning a trial to bill high-speed Internet subscribers based on their amount of usage rather than a flat fee, the standard industry practice.

The second largest U.S. cable operator said it will test consumption-based billing with subscribers in Beaumont, Texas later this year as a part of a strategy to help reduce congestion of its network by a minority of consumers who pay the same monthly fee as light users.

The company believes the billing system will impact only heavy users, who account for around 5 percent of all customers but typically use more than half of the total network bandwidth, according to a company spokesman.

You can read the full story at MSNBC, and then come back and join the discussion.

[Via Massively]