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Cable Companies Reject Tiered Pricing Model
The Lynxpro submits this Investor's Business Daily article carried on Yahoo!, writing "It details how the Cable Companies are resisting a pricing this competition with DSL providers by resisting tiered pricing models. The article highlights how Time Warner Cable and Comcast are both bringing access speeds back to 3Mbps without any price increases. What the article fails to mention is that is the very speed rate @Home offered before going into bankruptcy. The cable companies formerly partnered with @Home reduced access speeds when they resumed their own services in the wake of the @Home implosion." I wonder if (low-speed) Internet access will ever be just another basic-cable feature.
Than $1500/month for a 1.5 mbps T1.
Because tiered pricing could be so outrageous that it'd lose me as a customer. Whereas, on the other hand, alternatively, however, actually, the 3Mbps keeps me as a customer.
It's almost guaranteed that "Basic Cable" will never include broadband internet access. Perhaps one day "Standard Cable" will, but Basic Cable will never be anything more than the few local channels and the loony public access crapfest.
its all very well offering 3mbps but what happens if i take that 24hrs a day 7days a week ?
thats why @home failed because they never thought people would actually use the resources they had sold them
That's a pretty good idea.
Make basic cable come with a username/password and leave support at that. No tech support, no customer service, just a low speed (100k down, 30k up or something) thing for users of whatever cable service. If you want tech/CS/more speed, you'll pay the premium!
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
recently did the same thing as an apology for recent downtime.
1. ISP catches WIN32BLAST
2. ????
3. BANDWIDTH!
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
The Recording Industry Association of America (news - web sites) has asked broadband service providers to crack down on subscribers that illegally share music over the Internet.
Let me guess. They added this line at the article's end to make sure it gets thoroughly discussed on slashdot.
New year Resolution: Don't change sig this year
The speed was never 3 mbps; it was 1.5 at best.
These days, of course, while the advertised speed is still 1.5, I'm lucky to get 800 kbps. Repeated phone calls to Rogers have resulted in absolutely no action, and I'm considering switching to DSL.
What the article fails to mention is that is [3Mbps] the very speed rate @Home offered before going into bankruptcy.
Really?
And please don't miss our Thursday class where we're going to be learning how to add 2 and 2.
As the price of this technology continues to dwindle, I expect 10-100 Mbps rates aren't too far ahead. Of course, that would sort of necessitate on-demand video or something of these other imaginary future things. I don't notice a difference between my 100 MBps line at work and my cablemodem. For once, the cable companies aren't actually screwing their customers. Oh wait, I "need" a new cablemodem and $45/month for each computer in my house. Thanks Cablevision.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
I've been using alternative providers in the past 5 years. What is cable like these days in terms of services? Are you allowed to host at all? Do they offer a tier for business users who want to host or is hosting or running anything on any port just plain disallowed?
I guess I'd like to compare apples to apples when comparing to DSL or broadband wireless.
What are outages like? How often? How long do they last? What's the "real" upload speed vs. download speed? How are ping times to common sites as compared to other types of services?
I think we can use a quick discussion of these topics just so we're all on the same page.
I left the cable world because of many/all of these issues. I still see people struggling with them. What's it really like with cable, though? Do I just have a few bad experiences?
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
The only guarantee you will have is the bandwidth to the head-end [cable company] will increase to 3mb/s. If they have not increased their bandwidth to the internet what is there to be really excited about?
Everyone gets bigger straws, but the well only fills so fast.
Didja notice at the end of the article:
The Recording Industry Association of America (news - web sites) has asked broadband service providers to crack down on subscribers that illegally share music over the Internet.
Other than the tenuous link to upload speeds, that had nothing to do with the rest of the news story. It may just as well ended with:
Many broadband subscribers use their connection to view pornography. The Pope, who once watched cable television, is opposed to pornography.
Canada has had a tiered pricing structure for both ADSL and Cable Internet for quite some time.
ADSL starts at about 30$ a month for 1.5 Mbps down / 128 Kbps up, with various increments up to 4 Mbps / 1 Mbps for 170$ per month
Cable has a similar scheme with the low end being a bit slow, and a bit cheaper (25$ for entry level, which is suitable for email/ light web surfing), and the high end being about the same cost (170$).
Hrmmm. I really like the idea of basic cable coming with internet access. This sort of thing was what deregulation was supposed to be about. More products for cheaper given the open competition. Rather what has happened ever since cable deregulation has been a steady increase in the price of cable (from $9.00 to almost $50.00). And while the number of channels has increased, I am still getting the same channels I always watched, but my cable company has bundled in lots of shopping channels I don't want and I don't want to pay for. How difficult is it to simply give me the products I want to pay for? Give me 1) Broadband internet access 2) the History channel 3) the Learning channel 4) Discovery 5) CNN's 6)CSPAN 7)FoodTV 8) Speedvision 9) ESPN and perhaps a few others. The rest is just noise that I don't want to pay for and never watch.
So, at most 15 channels plus broadband should run what $25-30? They can have the other 70 channels.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
As someone who doesn't have or want cable for television, I find it constantly frustrating that internet access is being bundled with it, and can't be had without at least "basic cable"
For the record, our TV hooks up to our DVD player and VCR. Just starting on season 6 of STTNG this week. Hope to get DS9 soon.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
A few months back, I found a deal with Earthlink's cable service that was about $10 cheaper/mo than Time Warner. Plus you get a much cleaner ISP- better Usenet servers, webmail, dialup access, etc. Funny thing is, the bill still comes from Time Warner with a "Earthlink" line item! Anyway, I've never had much problem with the speed, and haven't got kicked for badwidth over-use (yet).
There's buzz that charter is moving consumers from 3 levels (256/128, 768/128 and 1500/128k) to 2000/128K soon at a reduced price and go back to two levels (384/128 and 2000/128k) in the spring.
All very confusing and silly if you ask me. I'm at 768/128 and don't really care if my incoming speed goes up. It won't change the way I use the net at all. What I need it more outgoing speed. Give me 768/768 if you want to get my attention. Sure would be nice if everyone in the house could do video chat at the same time without getting the shakes.
At least in the Madison, WI area. They bought @home's infastructure here, and I had the 768k service until this week, when they knocked me up to 2MB service at no extra charge.. Bandwidth testers show that I'm getting pretty close to that. yippeee!!
THE MAGIC WORDS ARE SQUEAMISH OSSIFRAGE
My girlfriend moved into a house recently and after having dsl for years decided to go with cable modem because of SBC moving over to PPPOE from DHCP. She signed up for the 756Kbs/down "silver" package, which was quite a b it less than the almost 1.5Mbs/sec she was getting with dsl, but lo and behold we get a letter from Charter the other day saying they were upgrading everybody to 2Mbs/sec until next March without a price increase. After having lot sof problems with billing and customer service with Charter, we were pleasently surprised(even if it isn't permanent).
"What the article fails to mention is that is the very speed rate @Home offered before going into bankruptcy. "
That was years ago. Bandwidth has gotten a hell of a lot cheaper, dirt cheap. In fact, pumping photons around the Internet has never been cheaper. Pesos on the dollar to what it used to be.
DSL is kicking cable's butt, and this is what cable had to do to be competitive. No big surprise here.
Just did this. 29.95 cable internet just went from 256kbps, to 2mbps. And my 1.5mbps, went to 3.5mbps... :)
I like the 360Kbps downloads.. lol
*There's Klingons on the starboard bow, scrape em off Jim!*
Congratulations, you found a way to complain about the fact that Comcast is increasing bandwidth at no extra cost. Anyone here think that's a little negative? What happened to the headline "Comcast Reverses Reduction in Bandwidth"? I'm not some pro-big-business-fuck-the-hackers economist or anything, but isn't that a "good thing"? Competition leading to better service at the same price?
I think I'll stop here.
Not fun.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Actually, when I had @Home for a couple of years they provided 4 Mbits/sec, and more to the point, it was a symmetric four megabits. Comcast may bump me up to 3 Mbits/sec (they haven't yet) but that will still include the backchannel cap at 256 Kbits/sec or thereabouts.
Regarding "tiered pricing", Comcast describes "Comcast Internet Pro" on their Web site for $95/month, which is just about double the rates for their regular service. It offers a 3.5 Mb/sec. - 384 Kb/sec asymmetric connection, and is (get this) "VPN compatible" (ooh wow.) If that's not a "tier" then I really don't know what they mean by the term.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
$30/mo for 128/128
$40/mo for 1.5/128
$50/mo for 3/256
(assuming you have cable TV) 1 IP, 5 or so email addresses, regular residential crap...
or... (what I pay for)
$80/mo for 3/256, 8 real IPs, 1 static IP, no transfer cap, better (business level) tech support
Cox HSD
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
Right when cable came to my neighborhood about 4 year ago, there wasn't an upstream cap (or a tv cable block, either:). No one else on my node had @home, so it was the de-facto way to send & receive files between my roommates computers (why we just didn't use the local network is beyond me).
Later on when I worked for @Home/AT&T Broadband, I almost got my access shut off because I'd uploaded 3 gigs of mp3s to my girlfriend's iMac. But since I worked there, they let it slide.
I think the fastest connection we ever observed installing those modems was 8mbps.
If you look for those answers on Broadband Reports
Well when @home went under my max upload rate was 15Kb/s, when AT&T took over the network atleast they upped the upload speed to 30KB/s, I would rather they increase the upload speed more then the download speed...
Funny, my cable company has different tiers of service....
WOW
Well I just left Comcast, because in these tough economic times. $50/month wasn't justifiable. The fact that they raised the cap doesn't change that, but I bet it will make all the career downloaders happy. Now if they had a tiered model in keeping with the present economic times, I would still be a Comcast customer, instead of a dial-up customer. I guess they don't need my money.
What's the point of having bigger pipes? I remember readin that Comcast and a few other cable ISPs were enforcing bandwidth usage caps and kicking people from their network... I don't know, but seems to me that this just makes it easier for you to get kicked. For now, I'll stick with my trust DSL line...
Investing forum
As the subject says, depends on the node your on. I'm also on rogers, and before they slashed everyone back to 1.5Mbps I used to get at "best" 2710kbps, now the best I've pulled is 1305kbps this is on non-docsis, normally I'll pull around 800-1100kbps. I'm on a TCM200 actually, but they are starting to do a test run on the non-docsis modems bringing them back up the to the 3000kbps range, in short periods in different area's. The best I've seen since their "testing" has begun is 1900kbps.
I won't say rogers doesn't have it problems, it stinks to high hell it's only taken me 3 weeks to actually get a damn truck rolling and to get someon to come out and look at my connection...with any luck someone might be here in the next couple of days.
Om, nomnomnom...
Maybe it just needed a nap.
That first quoted sentence is, well, not a sentence. Not a sentence at all.
michael greene
Look at this. Comcast wants more money for the higher speed.
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
The cable operators face a really difficult choice as far as speed and bandwidth is concerned. Remember, high speed access is only one of the products hey sell. They are also making significant income from pay-per-view and premium channels.
With higher speed access, some program originators might decide to cut out the cable operators entirely. For instance, my wife and I subscribe to MLB's Philadelphia Phillies broadcast over the Internet. This year, MLB added video, with surprisingly good quality.
But, with this MLB package, my cable company, as the carrier, gets nothing. If this were a pay-per-view event, they'd be a profit participant. And, who's to say some movie channel or sports channel or any kind of broadcaster or cablecaster might find it more economically viable to cut of the cable middleman and do the same thing?
This is one reason I worry about cable and telcos as the primary high speed gatekeepers. Telcos have their own issues with VOIP.
It will be interesting to see this all play out. Will cable companies see it in their best interest to give us this broad pipe only to watch us cut their throats with it?
..just called me the other day to see if I wanted to step mine up to 3Mbps down (512kbps/up). It's only $15/more a month. Their price stratifications look like this: 112k down ($34.99/mo), 500k down ($39.99/mo), 1.5Mbps down ($44.99/mo), 3.0Mbps down ($59.99/mo).
Pricing found here.
Why does a guy named Lynxpro need high-speed access?
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
Last weekend I got a call from Comcast offering me Cable Internet service for an introductory rate of $21.95/mo. I asked how fast and the telecaller said, "Six hundred and thirty five gigabytes." I said, "Per month? Per hour? Per second?" She said, "Per second, sir."
I asked, "Can I run servers?"
She said, "Yes sir!"
I said, "On port 80 and port 25?"
She said, "On all ports, sir."
I said, "Before I sign up I'd like to speak to your supervisor to confirm this great deal."
Sadly, the deal evaporated when I got to speak the the sympathiser, but she was interested in what I wanted. I told her I had 1Mb/1Mb symmetric access and static 8 IP addresses, and she asked what they could do to get me to move to Comcast Cable Internet service. I suggested perhaps symmetric service 1.5Mb/1.5Mb would be nice, or perhaps 3Mb down and a portable Class C netblock to do multi-homing with my current 1Mb SDSL uplink. She wrote it all down and said she'd pass my request along.
I'm still smarting at the lose of the 635GB/sec downlink for $21.95/mo though!
Better would be to focus on the slowdown of American broadband. When it was first rolled out there were no caps whatsoever and it was generally allowed to run at the speed that the equipment could handle. So the average DSL user ran over 3mbit in some cases if they had good lines. Uncapped both directions.
Then came the abusers and greed of the communications companies and today you see the extreme chokehold on the broadband today. SBC's base package for DSL is 384/128k dn/up compared to Verizon's 768k-1.544M/128k and the cable companies provide service comparable to Verizon.
New trends are starting to take hold in some areas with Verizon Wireless rolling out EvDO 3G which can run upwards of 2.3M and Verizon Landline (Seperate companies) is testing 2M+ speeds in certain (Lucky) markets with future plans to turn up the dial on broadband.
While those trends are nice to see you still have many who still have dialup due to cost and some worse off areas still cannot get a better connection than 26600kbps!
Interestingly people have pointed out monopolies. There is basically 1 telepone company in South Korea. Korean Telecom and a handfull of offshots after other companies were allowed to spring up but I'd say 90% of that country is serviced by KT and TMK there is only one cable company there. So it's questionable if more competition really is the answer (Korea may regulate, the us de-regulates)
I'm not sure what goes on in Japan but I would suspect nearly the same situation there also but you'll have to understand both countries until very recently had complete conglomerates (Sp?) of many things from electronics to communications systems. Now there is free market competition but not in the manner of how the US Govt mandated AT&T split up those companies were just forced to allow competition to "try" to work their way into a established system. Which probably will work becuase the exec's of those companies realize given choice people will pick the better company that provides them value.
And I'm still smarting from the slap in the face I got from AT&T in the wake of @Home's death throes. When you reduce someone's service by a factor of 2.66 (more, if you count the upload cap I have now), and then, with an attitude of arrogant magnanimity, decide not to raise rates right away (although they did fairly quickly anyway) and then sell your entire operation to an outfit like Comcast, you do piss people off. Even if Comcast does give me 3 Mbit/sec, I still won't be where I was and I'll still be paying more money.
... that's how you keep customers. And while were at it, how about the FCC allowing some real honest-to-God competition in the market. That would do more than anything else, I think.
The cable industry (along with the telcos and the cellular outfits) is steeped in the idea that reducing service and limiting investment to raise profits is the only way to run a business. How about finding ways to offer better service for the money
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
"The article highlights how Time Warner Cable and Comcast are both bringing access speeds back to 3Mbps without any price increases."
:-p
Assuming, of course, that the $8/month increase from Comcast last spring counts as "Abuse of Monopoly Power" instead of "Cost of Service Increase".
sez Mr. Kaze
The cable guy came to my aunt's house on a recent Friday afternoon. Said she was 60 days in arrears, she could pay now or be disconnected now. She had paid on time, but didn't know what to do, and called the Charter office to confirm. Nobody in the office could, and the cable guy cut her off because he couldn't wait until Monday when everybody was in. She didn't want to lose her premium channels, not even for a weekend.
She called up the pizza dish dealer, he had her hooked up Sat am. Charter called her Monday to apologize, their mistake. She told them to disconnect their cable or she would tear it off her house. They wouldn't, she did.
Way to go Paul Allen, learned your customer service skills from Billy, did you?
"DSL is kicking cable's butt, and this is what cable had to do to be competitive. No big surprise here."
I disagree. DSL's terms are more like going for a cell phone. You have a yearly contract, and a hefty penalty for leaving early. the only pluses are self-hosting, steady speeds, with phone capability standard. With cable you can leave at any time without penalty. The only thing is you can't self-host.
Now the thing that DSL is doing, is the same thing that DirectTV is doing. It's bringing competition to an industry that's not use to it.
Seriously, the poster really wasted my time with a garbage sentence like this. I struggled with it for a good 20 seconds before I gave up.
You've got to be careful about writing sentences clearly in the intro, because it will waste many 1000s of people's time if you don't.
Remeber on /. a while ago, they already started enforcing download limits and wouldn't give a number, just that some comcast(?) guy had DLed too much. Why do I get the feeling they'll be doing that a lot more in the near future?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Existing digital cable boxes already have a built-in RF modem to support the program guide and pay-per-view ordering. It probably wouldn't cost much to add an external Ethernet interface for connecting to the user's computer.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I don't think this is quite right. I was an @home customer, and my rate was always 1.5 down, 128k up. Since I've been moved over to comcast, I'm now getting 256k up, and soon to get 3 down. I'm not complaining until they start forcing me to pay for cable tv.
It details how the Cable Companies are resisting a pricing this competition with DSL providers by resisting tiered pricing models.
Erm... I keep trying, but I can't degarbleate this. A little help, please?
Bandwidth has gotten a hell of a lot cheaper, dirt cheap. In fact, pumping photons around the Internet has never been cheaper.
Says who? Sprint, UUNET, etc. have all jacked prices. Typical is 10% across the board each year in the past - on top of "old" pricing. Deals for highly discounted wholesale bandwidth are no where as competitive as the peak of dot-com - why? There simply isn't the competition anymore (and not enough people giving it away to make up for a little bit of cost).
DSL is kicking cable's butt, and this is what cable had to do to be competitive.
Actually, cable's doing this but for a different reason. Cable operators have generally failed to implement layer two over layer two/three protocols that allow them to rate shape customers effectively. Yes, they do have controls but overall they're pretty raw compared to mechanisms like PPPoE that is more common in DSL land.
The solution for the cable provides is to solve this by overengineering and using brute force. That's why you'll see 3 Mbps/1 Mbps type profiles, but at 9pm, it takes 25 minutes to download a 5 MByte file or dslreports shows you're running 108kbps down, 72kbps up.
Likewise, you'll find lots of the cable operators in smaller markets abusing their aggregate to the extreme. Yes, it's 3Mbps local, but a single T1 for all to share leaving town.
Just don't forget, bandwidth is no different than crude oil - it's very supply/demand driven, and right now, those who've survived to be here today in telecom just won't sell cheap anymore.
*scoove*
T1 is 1.5 both ways, and its GUARANTEED service..
cable rates goes all over the place since you are sharing with your entire neighborhood, and you don't get diddly of a guarantee.
Its the difference between business class and 'home service'..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
That's what I have here, even though I have basic cable, with some add-on's at $70.00 a month.
So, for today, I am using Basiclinux (for ram drive) and the Links Text Browser. I did open the baslinux.gz file and mount it on a loop, and added all I needed for dial up, so no "ppp settings floppy" is needed, etc. Broadband is something that has passed up this part of Eastern Mississippi, home of Joe Sixpack, obviously. The carpet-bagger provider is alive and well here in the Deep South.
Coming up with another choice is Comcast Home Networking. Cable modem with built-in router for TP & 802.11b. CHN customers get another bump up in speed, a Mb over standard cable Internet.
A sound mind, a healthy body. . . pick one
20 megabit Adsl2
FOAD
My buddy at work and I both have roadrunner cable modems through work. (That is _THE_ way to pay for cable) Last week we both noticed we suddenly were getting over 3mb bandwidth on our downloads. We have been checking our bandwith every day, just waiting for our funtime to be over. But it looks as though it may be permenent. Sweet.
That's odd, I'm on Charter Pipeline, and they have 3 tiers. Not that I'd know - they never advertised the fact to me, and I probably would've ponied up more when they went from @Home's 5mbps(!) to their current 1mpbs (and only 768 if you're a new customer), if they'd only told me.
However, I got a letter in the mail last week that said, basically, "since you put up with our abysmal service and frequent drop-outs, we've upgraded you to 2mbps until March 2004". Too bad Usenet is still capped at 256 (2x128kbps streams).
Personally, I think part of it is that bragging rights matter. I _never_ suggested DSL over cable, since cable was potentially 6+ times faster. But when they went to the DSL-competitive speeds, it became very easy to recommend DSL. Heck, at that point DSL was a much better deal.
I wonder if my previous suggestion (that the bandwidth hogs pay for themselves by evangelizing the product to people who never use it) is actually true.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
"Then came the abusers and greed of the communications companies and today you see the extreme chokehold on the broadband today. "
Funny how you didn't mention the abuse of the network by career downloaders? It's nice to know that Slashdoters are as clear-eyed as the people and companies they complain about.
What the article fails to mention is that is the very speed rate @Home offered before going into bankruptcy. The cable companies formerly partnered with @Home reduced access speeds when they resumed their own services in the wake of the @Home implosion.
@Home folded because they are completely worthless. It is easily within the capability of any cable company to run a cable modem ISP. Once that secret got out, @Home's days were numbered.
@Home was a great idea at first. They had the skills to run an ISP, so they rented themselves out to cable companies. However, the barrier to entry dropped very fast, and all the cable companies realized that they would be more effecient without @Home.
See that "Preview" button?
Here's what I think: Cable is getting their asses handed to them by DSL, and they need more marketing to "differentiate" them from DSL (ie, we're faster!!). Then they can (technically correctly) claim this, and win converts.
I tell ya, I'm about *this* much away from dropping my Comcast connection, since
I live in (or around) St. Louis, MO, USA. My area is blessed with the presence of Charter Communications. They are a cable company that does offer tier based pricing.
Service plans (select one)
384 K $29.99/month
2 M $39.99/month
There's actually a 3rd tier in the middle they don't tell you about on their website. I'm not certain what the specifics are on it. But the tiers are listed as; Bronze (Maximum-crap), Silver (Marginal-crap), and Gold (Minimal-crap).
Here's what they don't tell you: All upstreams, on all tiers are capped at 150 kilo-bit per second. Regardless of the tier you're paying for, you cannot buy more upstream. This has annoyed me for years. Oh how I long for the days of @home. I am curious why the upstreams are capped as they are. I don't understand why the upstreams are limited as they are. I think that it might be to curb child pornographers and data pir8s, but those activities are illegal. It's not up to my cable provider to thwart such activity.
It makes me wonder what they're doing with all that extra bandwidth. Their mail servers likely take in significantly more than they put out. Their web servers likely don't consume a relativly large amount of bandwidth. They must have a massive surplus of upstream that they're paying for anyway.
i dunno how we got it, but charter sent us a note sayign that due to network issues we are goign to have 2Mb download until March, which is groovy to us cuz we sigend up the for middle of the road pricing deal, and they actually did it, our Pron dl's a lot faster, and bit torrents are unbelievable! now if the cable co would go ala cart for their channels then all will be well
Not to be a stick in the mud, but my only comment on Earthlink is bad customer service. At least in my area (San Diego) they are absolutely useless. They misplaced (??) my credit card number and actually terminated my account before finding it and charging me a whopping $320. I have dealt with a lot of bad business but they are by far the most incompetent (I've had a whole string of jaw droppingly stupid interactions with their support). Of course as a gamer I'd give them a 6.5 (out of 10) bandwidth was good, but the ping was crap.
Sorry bout the rant. I know, mileage will vary.
Quack, quack.
... for the day when all TV is pay-per-view tv. I pick what I want to watch and pay a small sum for it. And maybe I get to watch a show without commercials since I'm paying to watch the show. Also, maybe there wouldn't be as much crap on the tube since people would have to shell out some dough in order to watch a tv show.
one word: 'nat' look it up, learn it, love it, live it, it will be your bestfriend.
By what measure? According to this recent article in PCWorld Magazine:
- There are about double the number of cable modem users as DSL users
- Cablers are more satisfied than DSLers with their service
- Cable costs less and is faster
- Cable is installed faster and with fewer problems
I don't know about you, but that looks like a slam-dunk for cable. Don't get me wrong, I have no love for the cable monopolies. But at the moment, theirs is the best broadband deal. (And don't start telling me about running servers. If you want to run a server, do it right and get rack space.)Now. If only the power companies would get off the dime and start their broadband offerings, we could really start heating up the competition...
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
You are correct(how often do you hear that on /. ???) that every one gets a bigger straw but the well only fills so fast. BUT you should get a bigger pipe to your email server(could be good!!) ALSO in my area TWC hosts a mirror of the OSDN downloads on their network locally(and i suspect mirrors of other stuff) so in theory when i download any of that stuff the fill rate of the "well" does not matter, actually your analogy does not even work. This does not cover 90%+ of the net but it is notable...also i belive that others on ones subnet would get a better connection to.
Linux Works
ti dtelais how teh calbe cmpoinaes aer riiesnstg a pniricg cmitptoeion wtih DSL pvoredirs yb renitsisg treied pirincg mdoles. ietrntsieng hwo oen wonrg wrod cna mses pu a stencene, btu a bnuch fo lteetrs dnseot
Error:
Charter did not "catch" WIN32BLAST virus. Only customers without a firewall were affected by this Windows vulnerability. The Win32blast virus affected everyone without the proper protection (restricting traffic thru RPC ports), regardless of ISP. Charter upgrades its service from time to time because bandwidth is getting cheaper, not because of any viruses that may be circulating. The recent upgrade in speed is actually part of a promotion.
@Home died becuase they were not taking in enough money per user. The cable companies got the biggest cut and @home got around 10 dollars per customer. They asked for a increase to 13 dollars and were denied by all the cable companies and thus they declared bankruptcy.
Speed has nothing to do with the price. 98% of the users will always download a average amount of data per month with a few fluctuations here and there. Bandwidth is becoming cheaper due to the push for more data based services and you'll probably see a greater increase in speeds and push for higher technology that will enable 10M and 100Mbit speeds to end users eventually. This will probably come in the form of fiber to the curb which will have the capacity to perform at these rates.
Most bulk bandwidth plans are on a per gigabyte 95%tile rating so if you had customers at 512k or 3Mbit if they held the same pattern the averages would be the same becuase you're just moving the data faster and not more of it.
Synchronous has nothing to do with speed. It refers to how bit timing is handled on the communications link. There is nothing to prevent a synchronous communications link from using different clock rates on the transmit and receive sides of the link.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I pay for and get 1.5 down, 1.0 up with Access Cable in Regina, SK. I had nothing but problems with Rogers in the GTA, with weekly downtimes of 20-36 hours, very poor download, and pathetic upload speeds. And this was on a shub with a whole 7 users, much less the 20+ that they later started rolling. If you actually want the bandwidth, you have to get Roger's commercial links, but make sure you check the fine print on the SLA before signing up. The whole point of a commercial link is to get a static IP and to get a usefull SLA that you can give a lawyer to smack them around with when they continue playing games. The other thing to do is run weekly speed tests, and whenever the bandwidth isn't up to snuff, send them the results along with your complaint. Mention that you're archiving the results, and that you intend to pursue legal action if they continue their breach of contract. After three such reports, have your lawyer draft a legal notice of intent. That will cost you a few dollars (unless you have a lawyer for a friend), but it usually wakes them up to the fact that you aren't some newb who's going to go oooh-aaahhh just because they claim it's high speed. You can also try disabling the DNS forward-first that queries their DNS servers first. As the majority of users are running default Win32 boxen, the DNS servers for cable and DSL ISPs tend to be woefully inadequate for the request volume they deal with. My own page load times have dropped by 40% by removing the ISP's DNS servers from the equation. (Yes, I know that's not nice, but if the ISP won't provide capacity, you have to do what you can to get around it.) You should also be aware that once you pass about 256Mbit, you stop seeing a real difference for "normal" surfing. You're spending so much time doing DNS lookups for all the )@%&)@%&)@&% banner advertising on most pages that the actual content transfer is a mere fraction of the time the page takes to load.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I pay for and get 1.5 down, 1.0 up with Access Cable in Regina, SK. I had nothing but problems with Rogers in the GTA, with weekly downtimes of 20-36 hours, very poor download, and pathetic upload speeds. And this was on a shub with a whole 7 users, much less the 20+ that they later started rolling.
If you actually want the bandwidth, you have to get Roger's commercial links, but make sure you check the fine print on the SLA before signing up. The whole point of a commercial link is to get a static IP and to get a usefull SLA that you can give a lawyer to smack them around with when they continue playing games.
The other thing to do is run weekly speed tests, and whenever the bandwidth isn't up to snuff, send them the results along with your complaint. Mention that you're archiving the results, and that you intend to pursue legal action if they continue their breach of contract.
After three such reports, have your lawyer draft a legal notice of intent. That will cost you a few dollars (unless you have a lawyer for a friend), but it usually wakes them up to the fact that you aren't some newb who's going to go oooh-aaahhh just because they claim it's high speed.
You can also try disabling the DNS forward-first that queries their DNS servers first. As the majority of users are running default Win32 boxen, the DNS servers for cable and DSL ISPs tend to be woefully inadequate for the request volume they deal with. My own page load times have dropped by 40% by removing the ISP's DNS servers from the equation. (Yes, I know that's not nice, but if the ISP won't provide capacity, you have to do what you can to get around it.)
You should also be aware that once you pass about 256Mbit, you stop seeing a real difference for "normal" surfing. You're spending so much time doing DNS lookups for all the )@%&)@%&)@&% banner advertising on most pages that the actual content transfer is a mere fraction of the time the page takes to load.
(Yes, HTML is easy, until you start bouncing back and forth with vB-syntax boards. I'd love to smack the wanker who came up with that perverse syntax!)
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
interspacing hours of downtime, during the beginning of the W32Blast onslaught, was just a coincidence.
I didn't read read the notice on the bill; a friend told me that's why they upgraded.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
About two weeks ago my Cable connection jumped up to 3mbps, sometimes pushing 4. There were alot of reports of this all over the country on broadbandreports. One guy on the Roadrunner forum apparently had talked to a bunch of people, and couldn't get a straight answer from anyone concerning the increased speed. I guess now we know why.
If cable companies start offering a tiered service, it won't be long before someone paying for a higher tier sues because they can't get the higher bandwidth due to network congestion. Since this is unavoidable given cable is a shared network, they're better off offering a one fee everybody gets up to x bandwidth, but we don't guarantee it.
I pay $40/month for 1.5M down and 128K up.
And I get.... 1.5M and 128K up for extended period, day or night, prime/off. That's downloading binaries from Giganews, so while I wish I could run a server, its hard to argue with 1.5M down with a family of 4 always downloading something.
Honestly, I hate to say it, but Comcast really kicks ass around here.
Ah, the back side is the bandwidth bottleneck.
Sure, I get an adequate 1.6 megabit d/l, and a 280 megabit upload.
Firstly, the 1.6 megabit download doesn't help when most of my traffic crosses the country and back. That's right, a request from here to a local provider often travels way the hell through chicago, DC, atlanta, LA, and who knows where.
Secondly, upload speed stinks. Yup, if I want to upload a document to my course web site, or if I want to upload my pictures to the photo printer guys, it just takes FOREVER. Yeah, 20kByte per second is OK fast, but it still takes a LONG time when you're dealing with 10 pictures from my digital camera...
Oh, and no 3mbit per second here... I think I'm swapping to DSL anyhow... it'll save me some time and effort, and that way I can get rid of that evil Cable TV.
It's also dated last year. You might want to find something more recent. Just like ATI drivers, things change.
"What the article fails to mention is that is the very speed rate @Home offered before going into bankruptcy."
I believe the 6 BILLION dollars they paid for Excite had more to do with it than their bandwidth.
Charter was nice enough to uncap my cable connection until March 2004. Where I used to have a 256k/128k connection I now have a 2m/150k connection. Apparently Charter is restructuring their pricing and services to offer 384k as their low end service. For me that is plenty.
I'm not the world's biggest bandwidth hog by any means. Only every couple of weeks I run apt-get update && apt-get upgrade all or Software Update. If anything needs to download I leave my Powerbook running over night. I first discovered my megafast connection watching a movie trailer for Kill Bill. It was done so fast I thought my connection got borked and Quicktime was up to no good. Lo and behold I was downloading the Large trailer at 240KB/s.
Since then I really haven't made much use of my super fat connection. Having a 256k link was good enough for me. I could listen to internet radio at 128kbps and stuff browse the web without a problem. Playing WC3 or NWN while another computer was on the web wasn't a problem either.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Did anyone (Timothy?) actually read this incomprehensible garbage masquerading as a English sentence?
The article highlights how Time Warner Cable and Comcast are both bringing access speeds back to 3Mbps without any price increases.
I don't know what part of the country THAT person lives in, but here in Middle Tennessee the cost of cable television goes up predictably every year without fail. They sign you in with a contract for some length of time and as soon as it's over with normally the price starts to climb.
The cost of the INTERNET service might not raise, but the cable price itself does. In my area, you can't have Cable Internet without at least Basic Cable. I personally don't watch TV and don't care to.
All of my sucker TV Addicted friends have bitched constantly (for as long as I can remember) about the yearly raise the cable company demands from them.
Given that, I'll stick with my regional DSL provider. (I avoided Bellsouth FastAccess...)
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
I was recently researching connectivity options for a client that needs a DS3. When the first quote came in at $8500/mo, I was pretty happy because I had given the client a round estimate of $10k-$15k/mo. Then I began receiving quotes even lower than this, and eventually settled on a contract at $6500/mo for the full DS3. And these weren't unknown providers--Level3, Abovenet, Sprint, and XO were a few of the companies that provided us quotes. To put these prices in perspective, I worked at a local internet provider back in 1997 that was paying almost $35k/mo for their DS3.
So, I don't know where you got your numbers, but my actual recent experience says that bandwidth prices have fallen pretty dramatically in the last several years.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
You should also be aware that once you pass about 256Mbit, you stop seeing a real difference for "normal" surfing.
Just split it in two at that point and send the rest to me. I could use a 128Mbit+ Internet line...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Forgive my ignorance, but is cable speed rated for both up and down? I ask as Comcast is the largest spammer out there (according to the spam I get with RR coming in 4th) and they NEVER respond to spam reports. If the new speed is for sending as well as receiving, it simply means more power to the spammers. Not something I'm looking forward to.
Michael Dinowitz House of Fusion http://www.houseoffusion.com
Most cable companies nowdays have a little clause in contract that allows them to CUT OFF your cable (1 warning, 2 warning, 3 3day cable cutoff, 4 1month curoff...), if you break their "Acceptible Usage Policy" or whatever buzzwords your local Cable ISP uses. That is when AUP (Acceptable Usage Policy department) starts harrassing you with those warnings, happened to my friend, and another guy who was running his office through cable (why he did it is even beyound me).
Live for the present, learn from the past, and dream of the future!
The fact that you're running on a DHCP or pppoe link should make absolutely no difference, as you're not relying on any dynamic configuration protocols to tell you what DNS server to use. (Truth is the IPs for the DNS servers don't normally change within an ISP unless they start rolling out local caching nameservers for huge nets like AT&T's.)
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
ps- linux is for bitches.
That must be why your mom likes it so much.
> Congratulations, you found a way to complain about the fact that Comcast is increasing bandwidth at no extra cost.
I've been paying the "extra cost" since comcast bought out AT&T. Here in Chicago, and I'm assuming elsewhere, if you don't get their video service they charge you a $10 monopoly fee. I have direcTV (with a direcTivo no less), I dont need their crappy cable. So the 49.99 broadband is now 60 bucks a month. Sadly, they can do this because the alternatives aren't that hot. I would have to get a POTS phone line to get DSL. I don't need another phone when I'm already paying for a cell phone.
At 60 bucks a pop, they *should* move to tiered pricing. There's a glut of people out there who wouldn't mind paying 25-30 bucks for a "slow" broadband connection (a difference most people wont even notice if what theyre doing is web/email). Wasn't verizon playing with DSL-lite just last year?
Comcast's pricing is monpolistic abuse and its pricing itself away from potential customers, many of whom do have POTS lines and could easily just get DSL. Yelling "3mbs down!!" means nothing to them and techies are much more interested in increasing upload speeds and running services than crazier download speeds.
Comcast could be giving us an alternative, but instead they're giving away bandwidth which is much, much cheaper than offering cheaper service. Once your infrastructre is up bandwidth is largely a non-issue. If comcast can keep getting 50 and 60 dollars a month from millions of people they have no incentive to offer cheaper plans.
Right now I'm weighing the benefits of getting a POTS line I don't need just to get DSL and paying just a little more. Sure I won't get 3mbs down, but I wont be dealing with this monopolistic "get video service or we'll punish you" bullshit and I'll get to run whatever services I want on DSL.
I just moved so I'm only paying 30 dollars a month (trial period) and frankly they've pretty much lost a customer after next month.
Plus a POTS line is tempting, the cell networks just aren't up to par just yet. Not to mention I can tweak my cell plan and maybe come out with a net savings and get a free POTS line to boot.
A more proper measurement of bandwidth is min(upspeed, downspeed), at least if you're running P2P. Once either uploads or downloads fill up the entire pipe, the other side side slows down to a crawl, since the TCP acknowledge packets get delayed by the backlog of packets going the other way. On a P2P network taken as a whole, total downloads must equal total uploads, so even if you're downloading more than uploading, that's because someone else is uploading more than downloading.
Here, I have 3mbit down/484k? up service, and very often, things slow down to a crawl because the 484k up cap is hit VERY easily. I'd trade my service for 1mbit both ways in a heartbeat.
@Home died because they paid too much for Blue Mountain greeting cards & too much for Excite.
Well, like Charter, RCN does have a tiered system. We have Megaband for an extra $10 per month; and no grief given us about having a router ("We won't provide support for a router we didn't install, but you're welcome to put one on -- please make sure it has a firewall).
:)
This is a 3MB pipe as well (basic cable internet is 1.5MB); a lot of us left ATTBI/Comcast because they're so oversubscribed locally, and the extra $10 seems to actually provide better service
Your mileage may vary.
> My comment can be quoted whenever, wherever, so long as you bloody well provide attribution! >
I believe most people would agree with me on this basic list:
1. Quit treating Digital Cable Television as a premium service. It is more economical for the Cable Companies (after they've upgraded) to offer digital than analog because they can squeeze in 5 (or 6 if you are Dish or DirecTV) digital SDTV channels in the same bandwidth as 1 single analog cable station. It you'd [the Cable Companies] would simply dump your analog offerings and bring in digital at the same price for areas you've already upgraded, you'd make a lot more profit. Furthermore, you'd cut out the major hole in your revenues, which are analog blackboxes. How many actually working digital blackboxes do you see on the market? It isn't as widespread. And guess what, if you bring HDTV down to the existing digital (SDTV) cable rates, you have another competitive edge against the satellite providers because those DirecTV customers who want HDTV will have to buy another dish...
2. Offer a la carte. You [the cable industry] should jump on the bandwagon before Senator McCain forces you to offer it that way. I'm tired of paying for channels I don't want and never watch. If you have a database of what your customers actually want, you can better negotiate carrier charges for the channels and you won't be strongarmed by companies like Disney who force you to carry ABC Family Channel and other stuff. Furthermore, you get rid of another customer gripe that generally leads to pirating of your services. And you'll again be competitive with satellite services. Remember when you didn't like the court cases that forced you to carry local broadcast channels? Now you all use that as a competitive tool against the satellite providers.
3. Let customers buy the digital set-top boxes from retailers. Us consumers will be buying new televisions to take advantage of SDTV and HDTV signals. Why should we have to buy a digital receiver for broadcast and rent another ugly box from the cable companies? Then, we could pick and choose. We could buy a digital HDTV cable receiver with a TiVo built-in and you [the cable companies] profit by not having to offer that to all your customers.
4. Stop wasting money on PVR/DVR systems that are inferior to TiVo. If you cooperate with TiVo, you can share in their market research for what people are actually watching as well as what commercials the customers do not skip over so you can have better information to provide to advertisers to increase your revenue. For example, your competitor Dish Networks could offer TiVo but they'd rather waste efforts on using the inferior Dish Player. The same goes for Comcast with their DVR test market, or Time Warner Cable wasting valuable AOL Time Warner money that could be better spent elsewhere on the server based PVR Mystro system. Stupid. Stop trying to reinvent the wheel.
5. Offer *consumer* tiered broadband. Comcast has the regular internet service and the new *pro* service. You need lower broadband offerings. Try a pricing level of $14 - $19.99 for 128Kbps down/56Kbps up service. You'll pick up a large amount of dial-up customers with a promotion with that because they can ditch their dedicated telephone lines. This is a large customer base (most of AOL's, for example, 20 million + customer base) ripe for the taking and most of them won't move up and/or need the standard cable modem access, but why should AOL have all that revenue? Likewise, let the AOL's and Earthlink's have combined billing for cable service. If the customer wants it, you might as well profit from it. Similarly, there are plenty of people such as myself that don't want to use Comcast.net as their email service. Reduce our rates by $10 per month. Do we really want to go through another round of domain name switches? Let's see, we've had @home.com, @attbi.com, and now @comcast.net. How about some consistency?
There, I've said my peace.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Cable has technological advantages in the "last mile" getting into the subscribers home. DSL would never have been deployed if cable really delivered all that was technically possible.
The cable providers around here care WAY TOO MUCH about what is being transmitted, and WAY TOO LITTLE about uptime, congestion, and end-to-end performance. These guys have managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. DSL is not always so great either, but there is less BS and the bandwidth is more reliable.
Does this sentence make zero sense to anyone else? "It details how the Cable Companies are resisting a pricing this competition with DSL providers by resisting tiered pricing models." Are resisting a pricing this compitetion? Huh?!
DirectTV via Telocity. I've heard some complaints about them, but for my money they where the tightest outfit out there. Never got a person who couldn't solve my problem in under 5 minutes. I must be getting old and cranky, but I value my time.
Quack, quack.