Ars Technica is reporting that Time Warner Cable is expanding its tiered, bandwidth-capped internet service to more cities, following trials in Beaumont, Texas. The trial allowed 40 GB per month traffic caps to residents of Beaumont for $55, and charged $1 per gigabyte of excess traffic. The new plan will expand to Austin, San Antonio, Rochester (NY), and Greensboro (NC) this year, with tiers of service ranging from 5 GB to 50 GB/month at prices ranging from $30-$55/month. Time Warner claims these plans are part of an effort to curb “infrastructure costs.”

Ars Technica was extremely skeptical. Cable internet is provided by existing cable lines (and expanding fiber lines) and is cheap to upgrade with replacement DOCSIS gear. And it’s only getting cheaper to maintain every year. So where is all of the supposed cost burden coming from? Sounds like they don’t have any – they just need a new expandable profit model.

“We need a viable model to be able to support the infrastructure of the broadband business. We made a mistake early on by not defining our business based on the consumption dimension” says TWC CEO Glenn Britt, to Business Week. Read the whole Ars Technica article here.

This news is becoming common. Comcast’s relatively generous 250GB bandwidth caps are already in place, and other ISPs are considering it. So, in other words, the country’s internet infrastructure is moving backwards. This will be a huge limitation for individuals and businesses alike – it was one of the biggest questions about the emerging OnLive gaming tech I posted on last week. How are bandwidth-hungry sites like Hulu.com and CNN Video supposed to expand their traffic when everybody’s too afraid of surpassing their caps?

The answer: tiered internet. If ISPs can reverse their offerings on bandwidth today, what’s to stop them from forcing content providers into exclusive partnerships tomorrow? What if they charged Hulu.com, or you, the end user, a fee to include their site in your service without counting towards your cap? Soon enough we’ll basically be charged for visiting any sites not under content provider fee structures. Mark my words on it. It’s gonna suck.

So far, Cox Cable here in Vegas doesn’t have a cap – knock on wood – but I’ve started tracking my bandwidth already for just such an occasion. LifeHacker has a nice article on how to do so – I’ve started using SurplusMeter for my Mac today. We’ll see where I’m at after 30 days of Hulu-watching, podcast-downloading, radio-streaming fun.

My MacBook Pro is on all the time, running a variety of net-dependent apps:
• Adium and Skype handle my IM services.
• TweetDeck updates my Twitter feed along with 3 or 4 auto-updating searches.
• I’m streaming the KEXP feed over iTunes right now.
• iTunes also updates any of the 18 podcasts I’m subscribed to – some monthly, some weekly, some daily.
• I watch most of my TV on ABC.com and Hulu.com.
• I get most of my music from free KEXP songs of the day, and Music that Matters podcasts.
• Evernote syncs my notes when it’s open.
• I regularly download huge texture files and photo resources for work, and receive ridiculously large files like PowerPoint presentations for reference and official high-res product shots.
• Worse of all, I’m an info-junkie – Firefox has 8 tabs open right now for random crap from tech news to wiki entries on Middle Eastern politics.

So I think if I ever have to use a capped service, I’ll be screwed well within 30 days. The bandwidth meter test begins now.