As we told you when Time Warner Cable "scrapped" their metered billing trials due to consumer outrage, the plan will return with a flashier coat of public relations paint. Company execs, who avoided admitting error of any kind, insisted when they suspended the trials that angry consumers simply needed "education." While Time Warner Cable is busy cooking up their latest metered billing sales pitch (which we expect this fall), the ISP's lawyers are busy mucking around with broadband subscriber fine print, adding new language to the agreement that says you agree to paying overage fees. This is important, as the language closes the loophole for customers who might want to sign a price protection agreement to avoid future plans to charge you $1-$2 per gigabyte.

According to user posts in our Earthlink DSL and Earthlink Cable forums, the carrier appears to be having a significant server outage that has prohibited Earthlink customers from accessing their e-mail or any Earthlink-hosted website. Calls to the company's 888 number indicate the company is working to resolve the problem, and the company's representatives say the troubles are related to a power outage in Pasadena. Atlanta-based EarthLink serves about 2.8 million customers, but has struggled to stay relevant with the decline of dial-up. Without the ability to resell service via next-generation networks, Earthlink turned to options like BPL and municipal Wi-Fi without success.

Earthlink's in a tough spot. They won't be able to share next-gen telco networks, their partnership with Covad goes only as far as that company's ADSL2+ network does, cost cutting is affecting support quality, their Muni-Fi efforts have bottomed out, and their investments in BPL were a waste of money.