So Time Warner is finally making their caps official...

They're dropping it altogether Wasnt against price increases, metered or tiered plans, limiting extreme high usage, them trying to keep their infrastructure up to speed. Just make it REASONABLE. Taxation with a little fair representation.

So is this them deeming things fit enough to stay as-is all of a sudden? I was ready to shell out extra dough to TWC internet, if their systems really were running on fumes to keep up. The alternatives here just arent that good. Kinda makes it more confusing...cuz we weren't supposed to get what "we want" from this lol.

I'm sure capped internet will come up again in the future from somebody

 

It wasn't an infrastructure issue. It was a revenue generating issue and a cost savings issue. The way it probably worked out, in one of those grand executive meetings, a question was probably raised on how they could reduce the budget cost for infrastructure upgrades. The grand idea would be to run off the customers with the highest usages while opening an opportunity to gouge customers who go over the limit, instead of doing normal infrastructure upgrades.

Naturally, the consumers are not going to buy into such ridiculous rhetoric. Yes, it could come up again, but it will fail.

 

I thought Time Warner had shelved the consumption-based idea, but I guess not. I just moved from Houston to Beaumont and talked with the Time Warner folks about internet service today. I was about ready to pull the trigger when she said something about their new consumption-based pricing. I immediately told her to cancel my order. She seemed truly astonished. She tried to tell me how it would only affect a small percentage of their customers. I told her it was a matter of principle. Someone else in my office is also about to cancel an order as well.

 

It was an incredibly stupid idea on the part of T/W. With the economy like it is, even people that can afford premium cable and internet access are looking to cut back on expenses, and paying for these premium services is one of the first places a lot of people will look to save money. I'm already gouged for phone, cable, and internet service from T/W. No way am I going to pay more, or even subject myself to having to worry about it. If they attempted this, I'd simply cut them loose. There are alternatives in Austin.

It was stupid to even float the idea. They've already lost business because of it.

 

anyone else see this?

http://gigaom.com/2009/04/21/twc-to-customers-you-dont-want-tiers-you-dont-get-super-fast-broadband/



TWC to Customers: You Don’t Want Tiers, You Don’t Get Super-fast Broadband

Stacey Higginbotham | Tuesday, April 21, 2009 | 1:08 PM PT | 20 comments

Well, I hope all of you who complained about Time Warner Cable’s plans for metered broadband are happy. Shortly after the cable company pulled its metered broadband trials, it’s also rethinking its deployment of super-fast broadband in San Antonio and Austin, Texas; Greensboro, N.C., and Rochester N.Y. Whiny citizens in those communities (including me) apparently don’t deserve super-fast broadband speeds of 50 Mbps unless it’s accompanies by tiers.

A Time Warner Cable spokesman says the cable company was planning to roll out DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades as part of its consumption-based broadband trials, but it’s now “reevaluating whether or not the trial cities are among those places” scheduled for DOCSIS 3.0 rollouts. As for rolling out next its next-generation cable network, Time Warner has been making vague statements but so far hasn’t laid out any definitive plans.

 

The NY Times has a little piece on this.

 

The irony of a company that refuses to offer a la carte television channels demanding a la carte internet is duly noted.

 

i'm seriously gonna drop TWC. what a load of crap

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=14934


The cable companies aren't happy that they've been one-upped in both price and quality of service

Time Warner Inc., after finally dropping its plans for metered internet services for the time being, appears to be back to its old ways. This story begins in Wilson, North Carolina. Wilson is a small city of about 47,000 residents located in the middle of North Carolina, roughly 45 minutes east of Raleigh, the state's capital.

The city's residents, like many, long complained over high internet, cable, and telephone prices. So the city launched an ambitious $28M USD program to deliver these services basically at cost, at much lower rates than local service providers Time Warner Inc. and Embarq.

For example, the city offers an expanded basic cable (81 channels), 10 Mbps (download and upload), and a digital phone plan with unlimited long distance to the U.S. and Canada, all for $99.95. A comparable plan from Time Warner Inc., with six fewer channels (no Cartoon Network, Disney, The Science Channel, ESPNU, ESPN News, or ESPN Classic) and lower upload speeds costs $137.95, for an introductory rate, which lasts a few months and then will likely be ratcheted up.

The city service, named Greenlight Inc., also offers a premium package with 20 Mbps (download and upload), faster than any service provider in the area (Time Warner Inc. and Embarq's "Turbo" plans top out at 15 Mbps download). And Greenlight also offers a stunning 100 Mbps (download and upload) local service as well, though it is not listed on their website in the basic packages.

Rather than admit defeat to the pesky local service and go quietly, Time Warner Inc. and Embarq decided to take the fight to the state government, lobbying for several years to get the state government to pass laws to try to destroy the local effort. And sure enough, thanks to a lot of hard work (and money), the cable companies are close to getting their wish -- North Carolina's State Senate have proposed bills to not only effectively crippling or banning the local service, but also to prevent such services from getting funds under the broadband portion of the national Stimulus law.

The city, has blasted the move, launching a new blog and urging the state government to reject the initiative. Writes Brian Bowman, the city's Public Affairs Manager, "I have a 10Mbps up/down connection at my house. Can’t get half that from the cable company. I buy it directly from the City of Wilson. After less than a year of residential service, almost 3,000 Wilson citizens are subscribing to Wilson’s fiber optic network. Local businesses can get up to one Gbps."

He continues, "If the cable/phone companies really want a level playing field, they’d open their books just like we do in the spirit of open meetings and open records law. They don’t want a level playing field. They want to be the only team on the field."

"Bottom line, these companies are using your state lawmakers to protect monopolies. It was wrong in 2007 when a similar bill died in the house and it’s wrong today."

The real irony, of the situation is that a recent report, by local newspaper IndyWeek indicates that the city first approached Time Warner Inc. and Embarq with a request for faster internet for residents and local businesses. The cable companies refused, unwilling to cut into their profit margins. So the city took it upon itself, and in the end found out it could sell the service to citizens at a fraction of the cost.

Local provider Embarq still defends its decision, saying it has the right to make money (which it argues Greenlight Inc. does not). The company's spokesperson states, "We would love to deploy DSL everywhere. We try to make smart financial decisions not only for shareholders but customers. In the very rural areas, sometimes it would take two, three or more years to even pay for the investment."

The issue is very non-partisan, in that the anti-competition bills are supported by a mix of Republicans and Democrats (a previous similar bill had been proposed by Rep. Drew Saunders (D-Mecklenburg) and Vice Chairman Rep. Harold Brubaker (R-Randolph)). Opposition to the measure is equally mixed.

 

The city should turn it into a utility or citizen run corporation and tell TWC to go **** themselves. The city of Wadsworth did that.

They wasted 200 billion tax payer dollars! I cannot say that enough. Every city should do this and tell them to go eat ****.

 

This company is acting like they're having a temper tantrum:

From the Consumerist:

While they've temporarily shelved metered broadband plans, Time Warner is cutting off, with no warning, the accounts of customers who they deem have used too much bandwidth. One such customer lives in Austin, TX, one of the original markets slated for metered broadband. Stop The Cap has the story, and an excerpt is inside.

Austin StoptheCap! reader Ryan Howard kicks off our premiere edition with a report that his Road Runner service was cut off yesterday without warning. According to Ryan, it took four calls to technical support, two visits to the cable store to try two new cable modems (all to no avail), before someone at Time Warner finally told him to call the company's "Security and Abuse" center.

"I called the number and had to leave a voice mail and about an hour later a Time Warner technician called me back and lectured me for using 44 gigabytes in one week," Howard wrote.

Howard was then "educated" about his usage.

"According to her, that is more than most people use in a year," Howard said.

Howard questioned the company representative about what defines an acceptable amount of usage so he doesn’t get cut off again. He pays extra for Road Runner’s premium Turbo tier, so he already hands more money to Time Warner than average subscribers for his broadband service.

“All she would commit to is less — perhaps half or as quarter as much,” he said.

Convenient, considering that amounts to 40-60 gigabytes a month, which falls right in line with the now-temporarily-shelved tier pricing.

 

You're not subsidizing anything though - bandwidth is a low to no marginal cost resource. You can download 2gigs or 2 megs - it doesn't cost TWC a single cent more to do it.

The costs come in when too many people are downloading at once which slows down performance.

A better scheme would be to use Ramsey efficiency pricing and charge more for usage at peak times.

 

Very true.

Let's say network capacity is some made-up measure of units that equal 100 units.

If you have 200 low-usage customers who all download 1 unit, but they all do it at 9:15am and you've got one customer who downloads 10 times as many units (10 units) but does so at 2:30am when there are only four other low-usage (1 unit) people online with him, who is it who's creating the network problem?

 

time warner back to trying to implement tiered pricing?

http://gigaom.com/2009/05/30/time-warner-cable-adds-tier-friendly-terms-to-its-contracts/

 

how are things so far for you?

Rocket River
I have the UVerse etc. . .and it is so so .
Had a few outages that were a bother

 

I'm not going to comment for a bit simply because due to a lot of rescheduling (not AT&T's fault, but mine), I only had it installed yesterday. So I really can't/don't want to say much after 1 day.