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123 Comments
- MarkusX, on 04/16/2009, -1/+91What TWC really want, is to prepare us for metered plans. The reason is simple: Times Warner wants to protect their content distribution business (video and cable TV) and the metered plan, expensive or not so expensive, gives them the leverage to keep their customers from (over-) using the competition like Netflix video streaming or Amazon on Demand or even Hulu and Youtube content.
This is what I call "having you in the choke hold" and in my eyes TWC's plans are nothing short of Internet-Bullying. - vinceislegend, on 04/17/2009, -1/+39Listen, if they want to argue that their service is a utility, they should be regulated like a utility.
The good thing about this is that it gives Verizon more time to set up FiOS out here, and then when the time comes, we can all abandon TWC en masse.
This ***** is so ***** retarded. - dalittle, on 04/17/2009, -2/+32Help New York Rep. Eric Massa.
Support his bill to "encourage" what Time Warner can do with the $200 billion in infrastructure that was paid for by taxpayers.
http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/04/congressman ...
Write your congressman to support this bill
https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml
Get it passed. - AmazingSteve, on 04/17/2009, -0/+28No but they ARE under a contractual obligation to provide me with the UNLIMITED and unfettered access to the internet that I payed for. They are NOT allowed to determine what I choose to watch with that connection by decree or any other means. If they can't compete, then they need to get out. When did business all of a sudden feel like it should be immune to competition just because the technology moves so fast?
- drmangrum, on 04/17/2009, -0/+24Until congress actually does something meaningful to put an end to the local monopolies, this will eventually go through. For most people, internet access is cable or DSL. 1 cable company vs 1 phone company. That's not fair to consumers.
- icndvl, on 04/17/2009, -0/+22What is needed is competition.
- NICU, on 04/17/2009, -0/+21Capitalism implies that there's a free market deciding the prices. That generally means there's competition involved and consumers can choose which service to choose. In a lot of Time Warner's Rochester region (and other regions they're "experimenting" in) there is absolutely no other competition. Your choices are Time Warner and dial up - no DSL, no FiOS, nothing. Time Warner is not trying these "experiments" in markets without competition.
- NICU, on 04/17/2009, -0/+21Time Warner is also trying to prevent people from using alternatives to their VoIP home phone service. It seems that setting incredibly low bandwidth caps and exorbitant overage charges to prevent competition would be in violation of federal anti trust laws. I hope some lawyers who know more about it than me look in to it. Luckily they're trying this in New York State and our AG loves to punish companies.
- rob89, on 04/17/2009, -0/+20unfortunately, they'll try it again under "better times"
- philodygmn, on 04/17/2009, -2/+22What I find perverse is to leverage environmental arguments over power usage and equipment yet ignore the transformative effects of cooperation, innovation, and consciousness-raising open, simple, unfettered bandwidth access can do to reshape society and civilization in an eco-compatible direction, especially in favor of corporate control and nearsighted profligacy.
- gemlarin, on 04/17/2009, -0/+17There is still a protest tomorrow in Rochester in front of the Time Warner Downtown Office.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/event.php?eid=79 ...
Remember, this is only a DELAY, not a complete shelving of the plans.
Also, be sure to write your congressman or woman to tell them to vote in favor of Massa's Internet Fairness Act. Emailing is nice, but it is a lot more effective to pick up the phone and actually call one of their district offices. Many times emails get overlooked due to the flooding of their in boxes. They also put quite a bit more weight on phone calls. It only takes 2 minutes, and they would love to hear from you. I have done it many times, and they always love to hear from constituents.
Just because you do not live in one of the test markets does not mean this will not effect you. If Time Warner successfully rolls this out in their test markets, you can be sure that other ISP's will be quick to jump on board. The only solution we will ever accept is NO CAPS, PERIOD! - Solkre, on 04/17/2009, -0/+15I'd rather pay one company to give me a reliable, fast cap-less connection to the internet. Then I'll buy TV, Streaming and phone services as I please.
- Lionhart, on 04/17/2009, -0/+12For the same reason that Microsoft isn't allowed to force you to use their software. It's anti competitive and monopolistic for Time Warner to filter your internet access so you can't access certain video sites and such. What they want to do is make you pay extra to access certain websites of the internet kind of like you do for digital cable service, which is complete and utter *****. Also good luck accessing sites like pirate bay if their plan succeeds, because I guarantee things like that will be 100% blocked on every major ISP.
- lews001, on 04/17/2009, -0/+12Because you are metering a resource that is unlimited. Electricity and gas on the other hand come from limited resources (on the majority) and as these resources dwindle it costs more to provide. But internet? Really? They are making more then enough money now to pay for equipment costs and the ability to expand and upgrade their networks. Because they refuse to do so with that money is not our fault and should not penalize the public. Wake up and realize they just want to make more money, and they see charging you for a resource that is virtually unlimited as a potential for that.
- anexanhume, on 04/17/2009, -0/+11For two very good reasons.
1) They've not done it before. Why would you grant a privilege and then suddenly revoke it? Granted they have the right to control their profits, but the consumers have a right to resent money-grubbing practices. You may adjust prices for your services, but you never adjust PRACTICES without a severe reaction from your consumers if it isn't a positive one. It would be like if McDonald's stopped offering french fries with their value meals. Mass hysteria, dogs and cats, sleeping together.
2) People have ran the numbers, and the cost for bandwidth is going down. (People in other countries pay the equivalent of $35 for a 100Mbps connection for crying out loud). They claim rising infrastructure costs, but the numbers don't back them up. There is no justification for this based on any cost on their part. They want more money, plain and simple. - diggdat, on 04/17/2009, -0/+11My guess when they refer to the bandwidth tools is that they will publish your monthly consumption on your bill.
They will use that to reduce the objections before they try to roll it out again, showing the larger percentage of people that are beneath the cap, that it does not really effect them.
Right now there is a general backlash because nobody really knows how much they use. In the end the backlash will be reduced because people only bitch about what effects them personally. - anexanhume, on 04/17/2009, -0/+10And I'm under no obligation to not switch to another provider who won't try to meter me. If TWC starts metering in my area, I'm confident alternatives will appear real fast even though U-Verse or FIOS aren't there yet, and I'll happily switch.
- shitton, on 04/17/2009, -0/+8They'll be back.
- QubitTarutaru, on 04/17/2009, -0/+8They should try again when they have a 1gbps connection, with a 315TiB cap.
- ihate2regist, on 04/17/2009, -0/+7The POWER of YOU!
AND you better keep that power under 60GB!
[hitler ascii art failed to load] - holyskeleton, on 04/17/2009, -0/+6they can lose their business faster than their bandwidth. I'll switch if that happens to me and my parents are already using FIOS.
- angryfirelord, on 04/17/2009, -1/+7Capitalism isn't the issue. If the ISP infrastructure operated under a free market, you'd have lots of providers to choose from (like back in the dial-up days). The problem comes from the greedy state and local governments, who grant ISPs like TWC and Comcast total ownership over the cable lines, creating a monopoly. The only way it can be broken up is if the local and state governments stop granting the monopoly or if total wireless internet takes off.
- VitriolAndAngst, on 04/17/2009, -0/+5If you had a list of non douchey providers.
Most of us don't have a choice, and the next provider is following the same policy as the last. There is no real competition. All the DSL goes through a baby bell (in my Case AT&T), or you can get Cable (in my case Cox/Comcast). Everything else is just a different flavor of the SOS. - swordedge, on 04/17/2009, -1/+6This TWC customer will never consider metered plans a victory. On the other hand, they have a telecommuter plans and since I work from home, I should probably be on one of them. One is a bit cheaper then my current one... $39.95 for 5000 down, 384 up. And it has SLA (better service)
- PhantomRogue, on 04/17/2009, -0/+5The even worse outcome is that Time Warner will ACTIVELY try to thwart competition from moving in. It took Verizon 5 years to break into the Pittsburgh area because Comcast had a monopoly on the lines and Comcast was in the ears of local municipalities to not let them build new wires.
Didn't Time Warner (AMERICA ONLINE) learn anything from when they started charging people by the hour? People left AOL in droves when others went unlimited. *****, don't people pay attention to history?
Build better infrastructure, not charge people more because your company bought old and ***** lines instead of building new ones. - LilRabbitFooFoo, on 04/18/2009, -0/+4When there's no legitimate competition in each cable area, this is what they can get away with. When true competition exists, price pressure is downward, not upward.
- stg3095, on 04/17/2009, -0/+4Wow. That's deep.
- milomilomilo, on 04/17/2009, -1/+5your entire justification for isp's actions is "they don't actually have what they sell, so its ok".
Take a moment and think about that.
You ought to upgrading those networks shouldn't ya, instead of selling a service you don't have to make money, while avoiding the cost of upgrading infrastructure.
Its always funny to listen to people defend this type of behavior because they don't realize how ridiculous what they are saying is.
do people even pay attention to how much money many other companies have invested in the ability to use large amounts of bandwidth? youtube, hulu, netflix, itunes. many music and video sharing sites, game download sites.
the whole only 10% use more than 25 gigs is crap. bandwidth usage is way up.
If isp's want to act like they are utilities, than regulate them like them.
they also can't do this anticompetitive crap.
How can you be perfectly content not only stalling progress in this industry, but actually watching it take 2 steps back while screaming "they have to or their shoes will wear out".
P.S: how does it make sense to you to say in one senctence that a 40 gig cap is way too low, and in the next say that 90% of users wouldn't even use 25, after writing a damn speech justifying the cap. - drmangrum, on 04/17/2009, -0/+4uh...what?
- Sarthax, on 04/17/2009, -0/+4Actually it will be an online meter that shows your raw consumption. my ISP Wave/Astound has rolled out 300GB caps on their highest tier of access and are testing the online tool. So far there has been no word of actual enforcement of the caps but they have them in place. Oddly enough the lower tier plans 10/1 and under do not have caps. You can breach 300GB but not as fast. This perhaps indicates the issue is peak bandwidth not overall consumption. If that's the case, why even offer the highest level of service if you can't provide.
- inactive, on 04/17/2009, -7/+11Greedy capitalism should always fail.
- Pigeon, on 04/17/2009, -0/+4I thought that in the US a lot of the infrastructure was built with taxpayer money in the first place?
- Sarthax, on 04/17/2009, -0/+4Netflix uses VC1AP at 2600kbps and 3800kbps for their HD encodes. 1 hour is 1.7GB give or take. A 2 hour movie would be 3.2GB for 7.8125 HD movies to cap at 25GB. SD is normally 850MB per hour.
I watch at least 4 movies a week in between other activities and that's 51 GB right there.. I never said I use VOIP 24 hours a day but my GF does use SKYPE for video conference with friends and family overseas. SKYPE Video uses 57.6MB per hour. I know she's on for at least 2 horus a day as she's a stay at home and has nothing better to do LOL. So let's say over the course of a month around 3.5GB. If I were to add to the mix it would be more.
Let's not forget other data use for surfing data heavy content sites, youtube, uploading, gaming, demos, trailers. 100 GB isn't that unreasonable to be considered abuse. What no one here takes into account is these data caps are upload AND download combined. There's overhead for various protocols as well as if you upload you get hit there for doing photos ala flickr or photobucket. God forbid you maintain a site and admin from home and manage content and DB.
I love home everyone tries to pull numbers up to prove that anything over 25GB is abnormal. If you ask me the people who don’t use over 25 are abnormal per our lifestyle. I guess the answer is to abdicate to the telco and let them dictate what is normal and I should stop gaming and watching TV and Movies. Take out all their grandmas using only email and casual users and I’ll bet their average data usage spikes through the roof to upwards of 150GB+ Putting caps on the data stream based upon fringe usage will only serve the telcos.
Everyone here knows what the caps are about so let’s stop pretending it’s for our own good. A saturated node is better than a cap and not being able to use your service for fear of extortion in the form of overage charges at 1 buck a freaking GB. This is about changing consumer behavior to ensure they don’t use video streaming. - kd1s, on 04/17/2009, -0/+4I'm also in the I.T. and Comm field and I know that the overcharges for T1's etc. are on the part of the telecom companies. I totally disagree with capping.
And coax - all the coax in use has been there for YEARS. Sure they upgraded amplifiers, etc. but that's nothing. - dreamache, on 04/17/2009, -0/+3As long as we keep their ***** in the spotlight, I would like to think that we the customers have a say..
- skintigh, on 04/17/2009, -0/+3I don't want to go on a rant, here, but America's foreign policy makes about as much sense as Beowulf having sex with Robert Fulton at the first battle of Antietam. I mean when a neo-conservative defenestrates it's like Raskolnikov filibuster deoxymonohydroxinate.
- FishThePirate, on 04/17/2009, -0/+3Competitor? What competitor? Where I live in NY there isn't access to another ISP for the whole county pretty much. The ISPs pretty much have monopolies because they own the lines in given areas. Most people aren't going to move fifty miles away just to change their ISP so they effectively have no choice in the matter.
As long as the ISPs own the physical cables this will be the fact. We need the government to give every company access to the same lines, like with telephones. - ultrafez, on 04/17/2009, -1/+459 6F 75 20 67 6F 74 20 74 72 6F 6C 6C 65 64 21
- mattsim, on 04/17/2009, -0/+3Unfortunately, all the providers in my area are colossal doouchebags! Comcast or ATT that's it!
- kd1s, on 04/17/2009, -0/+3You are correct. CATV operators are losing revenue on the video side. You'd think that maybe they'd push more broadband out there to make up for the loss. But no, they just grumble along.
- FXNGLAS, on 04/17/2009, -0/+3I'd start writing letters to Verizon to get Fios lines run in your area immediately. TWC will definitely move forward with this, and I will bet in the very near future, despite their "official statement"
- anarchist101, on 04/17/2009, -0/+3Because it's not really about the bandwidth, which is not that much of a cost and getting lower every year. It's about protecting their on demand revenue and maximizing profit.
Business is not about being fair to your competition or your customers. Unless, of course, being perceived to be is to your benefit.
Not a pretty picture, I agree, but that is the way it works when they are not regulated properly and politicians are for sale to the highest bidder/lobbyist. - Sarthax, on 04/17/2009, -1/+4"100 gig and you are certainly abusing the network. 90% of the people wouldn't pass 25."
I could hit that just watching Netflix and using VOIP between my GF and I. Multi-user households especially ones with teenagers will destroy that in a matter of days. I don't "ABUSE" the network, I USE it. It's not my fault 90% of the people out there don't utilize the internet other than email and checking for recipes and the popcap games. Our entertainment industry has given us the services based upon our current network capabilities. Online video streaming, radio streaming, photo services, online gaming, online distribution of movies, games, music, ebook. These are 100% legitimate services and anyone could easily hit 25 if they were to watch 5 HD movies, buy some music, do a little gaming, and get some demos and movie trailers.
Abusers? Really? - inactive, on 04/17/2009, -0/+2Good luck finding a satellite service that doesn't meter you one way or another (research "buckets" to find out what I mean). Trust me, if you can get land line broadband it doesn't matter if you have a 25GB cap it will be WAY better than any satellite solution. Been there, done that.
- dalittle, on 04/17/2009, -0/+2It you believe you are going to lose, you always will. The rest of us are going to win this.
- inactive, on 04/17/2009, -0/+2Who cares?
- anexanhume, on 04/17/2009, -0/+2As lews pointed out, there's no bandwidth tree. It's an unlimited resource. This is in contrast to electricity or water, which are limited resources.
Bandwidth USES resources, which we should be charged a different rate for, and we are. If I want faster internet, I pay TWC more per month because I use more of their resources (equipment, electricity). The point is that the cost of electricity to them is really inestimable compared to other overheard costs. So, I'll gladly pay them a fixed amount for the quality of infrastructure they provide me.
This is completely analogous to their cable services. Say I have 4 HDTVs in my house and they are all constantly on, constantly watching HD channels. Another guy has the same setup, but only one TV is on at a time, and not for very long. He using less bandwidth, but he has access to the same resources and infrastructure, which is what he is paying for. No matter how much I watch or how much I use my internet, there's an upper limit to how much content I can realistically pull in based on the limits inherent to the equipment they provide for me to use. I'm paying for capability and infrastructure, that's it. - diggdat, on 04/17/2009, -0/+2Not sure why someone would digg you down for that input, I dug you back up.
Thanks for posting how it works with your ISP. - TheShad0w, on 04/17/2009, -0/+2I don't even pay for anything but the internet. I have VoIP and services like Hulu, Fancast, and bit torrent for my television.
- mixmasterasia, on 04/17/2009, -0/+2dugg for positive news
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