• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, April 13, 2009

Time Warner's planned pay-per-download Internet pricing for Rochester, N.Y. residents is keeping the freshman Congressman from New York, Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) occupied.

Last week, he said he intended to draft new legislation. By Friday, he repeated that vow and also gave the (unwritten) bill a name, The Massa Broadband Internet Fairness Act.

"While I favor a business's right to maximize their profit potential, I believe safeguards must be put in place when a business has a monopoly on a specific region," he said in a statement issued Friday.

Massa, who held a town hall meeting about the matter in Henrietta, N.Y. on Friday night, said he intends to introduce the measure within 10 days, according to GateHouse Media's Daily Messenger.

Time Warner began a test of tiered pricing last year in Beaumont, Texas. The company intends to also roll out tests in four new markets this year -- Austin and San Antonio (Texas), Greensboro, N.C. and Rochester.

The new tests will offer residents a choice of plans ranging from 1 GB per month for $15 to $100 GB per month at $75. Those who exceed the caps will be charged extra, up to a maximum of $75 per month.

Thursday night, Time Warner Chief Operating Officer Landel Hobbs posted a justification of the new pricing in which he warned that Internet demand could outpace capacity, resulting in potential "Internet brownouts."

That statement was met with skepticism. "Where did they find that one, some old press release by Enron?" asked Robb Topolski, chief technologist for the Open Technology Initiative, a project of the think tank New America Foundation.

Critics of Time Warner also allege the company's tiered pricing is intended to discourage people from watching online video for free rather than purchasing cable TV subscriptions.

Hobbs defended the move to metered pricing as the "fairest approach" to deal with increasing Web use. He added that consumption among high-speed Internet subscribers is increasing by about 40% a year.

Topolski said that growth has actually slowed from prior decades. He said growth went from 80-100% in the past, to 50%, to the current rate of 30-40%.