ISPs to hike video streaming costs?

Streaming movies at home is cheaper than going to the cinema, but that may soon change, The Daily Mail reports.

Cable and pay-TV companies are trying to find the best ways to profit from the rising demand for Internet bandwidth, in large part because of Netflix and Hulu.

At least one major cable operator will institute so-called usage-based billing next year, predicts Craig Moffett, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., in New York, Bloomberg writes.

He says Cox Communications, Charter Communications or Time Warner Cable may be first to charge Web-access customers for the amount of data they consume, not just transmission speed.

GigaOM writes that services like Netflix and Hulu Plus are attractive in part because they are cheap: At $7.99, both services are significantly less expensive than the $70 on average that cable subscribers pay. But if more streaming means higher broadband prices, those services do not look as cheap.