Get Ready to Pay More for the Web

If some Internet service providers get their way, the meter could be running while you're shopping, emailing or reading news reports. That's because cable and telecommunications companies are forging ahead with plans to radically change their familiar flat-rate monthly Internet plans - even as new options for watching movies and TV online proliferate. What should web surfers expect? "Usage caps" that would penalize those who send and receive too much data. Caps are set by price between 5 and 40 gigabytes. To put the caps in perspective, purchasing and downloading the movie "Wall-E" from iTunes would use up over one gigabyte alone. Working through the first season of TV's "Mad Men"? In total, those episodes would consume nearly seven gigabytes.