arstechnica.com — Time Warner Cable has increased all of its Internet data caps, added some new ones, and generously offered to limit overage charges to $65/month. Perhaps that's because the company's broadband operations are actually earning more cash and have lower expenses than they did in 2007, making TWC's stated rationale for the caps less tenable.
Apr 10, 2009 View in Crawl 4
dm33Apr 11, 2009
And even at $150 its NOT unlimited, its "virtually" unlimited. Some hidden cap to that as well even for $150/mo!
vindexusApr 11, 2009
Needs more ellipses.
murrdpirateApr 11, 2009
All the article says is that broadband costs had decreased by 12% and broadband revenue had increased by 11% in 2008. If you think that's enough of a picture to gauge how profitable they are, you are mistaken. That doesn't even indicate that revenue is higher than costs! And when were costs incurred? Maybe they spent billions of dollars laying cable in previous years and still need to make up for that. Obviously once you lay the foundation of your network, costs are going to decline big time in following years, but you still need to make up for that initial cost.In fact, Time Warner Cable lost 7 billion dollars in 2008. And you're claiming they need to lower prices? Please explain that. <a class="user" href="http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ATWC">http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ATWC</a>
murrdpirateApr 11, 2009
Restricting bandwidth is even worse. I would rather have the option of paying more money if I really needed to go over my limit. Would you prefer that telecoms cut off your cellphone from the network when you used all your minutes? They HAVE to cap us somewhere, we cannot all have unlimited internet, it is PHYSICALLY impossible. Yes, one would hope that the infrastructure would keep up with usage, but that is very difficult to achieve. It takes no effort to make a website that requires an insane amount of bandwidth. I could make a website right now that streams HD content for every computer in your house. Or dozens of streams at a time so you can save it on your hard drive. You expect the cable companies to be able to meet this demand right away?
fluxionApr 12, 2009
dude, you get a set bandwidth cap. with time warner your upload rate is ~50KB/s. multiply that by 31*24*60*60. that's how much bandwidth you'd use a month running a server. its about 125GB. doesnt matter how many people you stream to. there's already an implied cap on everyone's internet connection.granted, the download cap would be about 10 higher assuming you're downloading at full speed 24/7. but thats what..1250GB?. so you're "unlimited" internet works out to maybe 5x more than comcast's 250GB/month cap. so "unlimited" internet is not even an order of magnitude more than what other providers can comfortably sustain. and if they cant sustain that, then they can either upgrade their service to remain competitive with all the other providers who are spending a s**tLOAD more money laying in the infrastructure for things like FIOS, or simply admit that cant offer speeds that high and change their plans accordingly.and what the hell man. would i rather they cut off my cell phone if i used all my minutes? NO. my whole point is that if they simply throttle the connection when i go over the cap they serve their purpose in reducing bandwidth usage, and i stay online while being able to stay on a fixed monthly budget. there is simply no reasonable analogy to cell phones here other than plans carefully designed to screw you. besides, if people like you werent so gullible we'd all have unlimited minutes anyway.they're not even exploring that route because the whole thing is set up to f**k you for more money, and you're buying right into the bulls**t. you honestly believe TWC is gonna start pulling out of areas where there's too much competition to enact bandwidth caps and increased cost without bleeding customers? no, itll be business as usual. they can sustain it, they just dont want to, and wont, if they dont have too.
sultanaApr 12, 2009
No. They'll make money off them. Since cable is always on, even when the computer's off or idling--no surfing, downloading, or anything else, bandwidth is still being used. So far, I've seen a few people figure out if a computer only idles (or is off) for the entire month, you can still use about 2-2.5 gigs which puts one over the cap anyway.
murrdpirateApr 12, 2009
Your plan for "infinite internet" is not infinite internet. It's more like the cable company dumps a bunch of bandwidth in a trough and says "come n git it!" Sure, you're not "capped" at a specific data transfer amount, but you're still capped. If too many people are eating bandwidth at the trough, you'll only get a small trickle. By capping the total bandwidth each person gets per month, it ensures that everyone gets a large flow of internet when they use it. That is important as the internet starts making use of higher and higher bandwidth functions like HD content on youtube.When I was in college, my cable was slow as s**t and it was extremely irritating. Now sure, maybe the company was just s**tty, but there are definitely a lot of people using bittorrent and stuff, especially in a college town, that are consuming so much more bandwidth than anyone else. I would have preferred that they put a reasonable cap on their total data transfer so I could have decent speeds for the few times I used the internet. If you're downloading a s**t load of movies and making my bandwidth slower when I don't even use the internet that much, why shouldn't you have to pay more? There is no way we can all have infinite internet, your no-caps plan is just a cap on speed instead of a cap on total amount, although a cap on speed is a cap on total amount too. It's just that your cap will vary depending on the time of day. I at least like your restricted bandwidth plan better because it doesn't let high-usage users f**k me over as much. But I still would prefer having the option to pay more. It's really not that hard to keep track of your total data transfer. s**t, someone could easily make a program that would monitor your usage and even automatically limit your bandwidth as needed.Yes I realize text messages are not $.10 a pop. I'd probably agree with you that this is not the business model I prefer. I'd want something just like what I'm agreeing with TWC doing: charging for a set amount of data transfer and letting you use it however you want (voice, data, text). But I don't think these companies are evil for using this business model. By overcharging for text messages, they are able to offer cheap cell phone plans. Sprint is losing money hand over first and AT&T and verizon have pretty slim profit margins (look them up on google finance). What they're doing is similar to the razor blade business model. The razor with the handle is sold at a loss to get you to but it, and then they make up for that cost by charging you more for refills. Same with video game consoles. ALL of the consoles are sold at a loss and they make it up by charging a lot for games. The reality is that these telecoms are not making much money, if at all. So I completely disagree with your attitude that they are all ripping us off...I mean that's just not possible considering their profit margins. You can disagree with their business model, but I'd suspect that's just because you're downloading s**t all the time. There are times when I can barely watch regular youtube on my highspeed connection, let alone all the HD content that's coming out. As more and more people use higher and higher density content on the internet, it will become extremely slow and we won't be able to watch HD stuff. Personally, I don't use a ton of bandwidth all the time, so I would prefer caps so I can actually use the HD content. If you don't like caps, I have to assume it's because you download a s**t load more stuff than post people and don't want to suffer. But for me, I benefit. But really, the caps is more fair and you know it.