Time Warner Cable to Test Tiered Bandwidth Caps

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "According to a leaked internal memo, Time Warner Cable is testing out tiered bandwidth caps in their Beaumont, TX division as a way to fairly balance the needs of heavy users against the limited amount of shared bandwidth cable can provide. The plan is to offer various service tiers with bandwidth fees for overuse, as well as a bandwidth meter customers can use to help them stay within their allotment. If it works out, they will consider a nation-wide rollout. Interestingly, the memo also claims that 5% of subscribers use over 50% of the total network bandwidth."

Comments

Re:A new approach to limiting usage is needed

[taniwha]

it's cable - you get to listen to 1 qam (6MHz wide - more for the new docsis that isn't here yet) and you're limited to ~25Mbits by that technology ... and you're sharing with your neighbors - upstream is much much less - you're never going to get more than what the cable modem can give you anyway - the cable company has a limit to the number of qams or analog channels they can fit on the cable (~120) and you're sharing that with TV.

Not to excuse the cable company but they see it as that they're in a bind trying to trade off how many TV channels they can support (and how many analog ones in particular - (the sooner they die the better) with how many qams they dedicate to cable modems - and the expense of injecting the internet feeds in lower and lower down in the plant to support more and more customers with more and more bandwidth (ie sharing with fewer neighbors)

They shouldn't have ever offered 'unlimited' because as we all know it really isn't and for technical reasons can't be as the customer base increases - they're depending on statistical models which those 5% who use 50% of the resources (if that's a real number) break