Well, I can't say I didn't see this coming... Time Warner: Bandwidth hogs, pay up! Cable company decides heavy bandwidth users will pay an additional monthly fee. By Michael Martin Network World, 04/08/02 The all-you-can-eat bandwidth buffet that cable modem users enjoy may soon come to an end. Later this year, Time Warner Cable will begin charging users a fee for downloading more than a monthly limit. The company has yet to release specific pricing changes. The reason behind the move? Cable modem hogs cost cable companies money. Their networks are based on a shared infrastructure with several homes or businesses sharing a local access pipe. If one home or business is using its connection to transfer large amounts of data, performance for all other homes or businesses that rely on the same access pipe is affected. Ultimately, to ensure better performance for cable modem users on that portion of the network, the cable company has to segment the network by installing new equipment. "Some users take up an inordinate amount of bandwidth," says Mike Luftman, a spokesman for Time Warner Cable. "Anyone staying below a total amount of bits moved per month won't pay more. But if you consistently go over the limit, you're going to have to pay." Telework programs for large enterprise customers won't likely be affected because they're already subject to special pricing plans handled by the cable companies' business divisions. But corporate teleworkers for smaller companies, who regularly upload and download large graphics files, for instance, stand a greater risk of being affected than those who use their cable connection mostly for e-mail. Unlike some restrictions imposed on cable modem users in the past, such as not letting teleworkers connect to their businesses via VPNs, the bandwidth limits are not aimed solely at business users. But in some cases, the restrictions could make cable access a more expensive proposition than companies had expected. While charging heavy cable modem users more per month may drive some of them to other access methods, such as DSL, that's not necessarily a bad thing for cable providers, says Matthew Davis, an analyst with The Yankee Group. Heavy users cost the cable companies a lot of money by forcing them to make network changes, and it's not necessarily worthwhile for the providers to keep the heavy users happy, Davis says. The cable providers will likely ensure that the additional charges aren't large enough to drive away droves of users, he adds. Any pricing scheme the cable providers come up with is unlikely to deter telework programs from continuing to rely on cable modem access, says Dana Tardelli, an analyst with Aberdeen Group. "If it's $40, $50, $60 or $70 per month, it shouldn't matter because access is access and the job still needs to get done," he says. "If they doubled the price, it might be a problem, but I doubt they'd do anything that drastic." While Comcast and Cox Communications each say they have no immediate plans to follow Time Warner's lead, now that technology that lets providers monitor network usage is available, it may be only a matter of time before they too move to a usage-based system. Another sign of things to come: Cox has begun user trials of a tiered service for which customers pay more for guaranteed 128K bit/sec symmetrical speeds, says spokeswoman Amy Cohn. More...
Oh, well. No problem. I've been wanting to gety rid of this crappy digital cable stuff for quite a while. If they try and charge me, I can show my girlfriend that it's cheaper to go back to xDSL and Direct TV.
Well this sucks. It's so nice to be able to leave movies and other stuff downloading all night and when I am at school. This really sucks b/c this means I'll have to start watching my bandwith. Man this would be the first time since AOHell switched to the unlimitted access plan (like 5 years ago) that I will not pay a set monthly fee but rather a floating one. Depending on the cost of this, DSL might be in my future.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! I better download all the movies I can in the next few months. Any one have any idea what the limit will be? Maybe 1 gig a month? That'll limit me to a movie a month.
NNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Say it isn't true!!!!!! This is the worst news I have heard in a LONG time. (Okay, extremely exagerated and selfish statement.) I had DSL before and I hated the service. I guess the nice thing about cable modems is they are month to month, so if it is too much, I'll just switch. Then I'm stuck with some crappy DSL service and the horrible contract. What do I do? LOL, why do I care so much about a freaking $10-20 increase compared to all the other terrible things going on? Man I feel so selfish for getting upset about this, and not all these other things going on. B
Glad I am on DSL, but I will be moving back to Time Warner later this year. So I gotta watch my Grokster DL's.
Sh*t. I spent all this time looking for the cheapest, but decent high-speed internet access I could get, and now all that work is going down the toilet. Oh well. We'll see how it goes.
Then again, I wonder how much is 'excessive.' Would 24 hours of streaming video a week be considered excessive?
I have to believe it would be 10GB or so per month. They will probably use a standard similar to what larger web hosts use - 10GB to 20GB per month in bandwidth is standard. It still sucks.
I would think that the limitations wouldn't be so severe so that they would impact the average user's surfing, downloads, and streaming media. It's clearly the power-downloaders they are going after...but how much is excessive? I don't know...but hopefully its reasonable. I'm hoping that the limitations are only for downstream; I use the upstream quite a bit (web server, TS, FTP, etc.) I'd really hate to move to DSL- its not the price; its the dropoff in speed and uptime I'm more concerned about. I'm doing some work for Road Runner right now...I'll see if I can find out some more information.
No. Technically you're paying for speed which coincidentally equates to bandwidth, but not necessarily the amount of data you're transferring.
You think it will be that high? Why do I get a freaky suspicion that the lowest-tier service will be capped at something like 4-6 GB? No reason to guess this - just a wild guess. I hope for you guys' sakes that Jeff's right, though.
I wonder if this will include non-browser functions like emails or FTP. I would guess anything coming down the pipe would be included, but, hell, I could go through 1 GB every couple days when I'm in the middle of doing a website. The other issue is how much could they possibly reduce it if they don't want their prices to jump significantly. If my price doubles or something like that, it isn't worth me keeping it and I know a lot of people with Roadrunner that would be in the same boat.
If DSL networks get bogged down because of an influx of heavy download users, there will likely be usage-based pricing imposed there also. Mango
As the article mentions, DSL doesn't really suffer from the same problem as cable providers due to the different architectures. Still, the high-speed links these guys lease aren't cheap. You're right...it's just a matter of time. Ordinary web browsing (and most email) doesn't impact network utilization adversely. It's the hardcore P2P/newsgroups users that are being targeted. If that 5% of users chooses to leave, I hardly think that RR (or any provider for that matter) will shed a tear. Their $45 per month doesn't put a dent in the amount they are paying for that bandwidth. They will have to learn to moderate their downloads, or spend a few hundred on a fractional T1....
Doesn't affect me at all. I had a bandwidth cap in Jester so I've learned to limit my downloads. You use it, you pay. I like that policy. Now, only if they would lower the cost for those who stay under, I'd be happy
This is more targeted at heavy duty busines users. Unless download like 20 movies and a thousand songs a month, I see no reason why this should affect users.
