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Time Warner Cable Tries Metering Internet Use
As rumored a couple of months back, Time Warner is starting a trial of metered Internet access. "On Thursday, new Time Warner Cable Internet subscribers in Beaumont, Texas, will have monthly allowances for the amount of data they upload and download. Those who go over will be charged $1 per gigabyte... [T]iers will range from $29.95 a month for... 768 kilobits per second and a 5-gigabyte monthly cap to $54.90 per month for... 15 megabits per second and a 40-gigabyte cap. Those prices cover the Internet portion of subscription bundles that include video or phone services. Both downloads and uploads will count toward the monthly cap."
Let's have some honesty here. If we're going to have limits then let them be clear and open ones, where customers can make decisions about which limits they want, and how much they're prepared to pay for them.
Far better this approach than one which says "Eat what you like, so long as you're reasonable."
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I could have swore we already fought this battle. As I recall, my first internet provider in 92 had caps and limits and due to popular demand eventually even the mighty AOL dropped them. Do the people that run these large corporations not understand Internet history??
No it isn't (yet). You obviously didn't read the short article as it states this trial is only running with new subscribers and not existing ones.
Not necessarily. It's not easier to argue that it's your bandwidth, because it's not. It's still their bandwidth, and they will still want to QoS it however they please.
Metering the bandwidth has little to do with them wanting to finance new infrastructure and a whole lot more to do with new ways to extract more revenue from their existing customer base. I mean, once you lock someone into a $150/month package deal of internet service, you can only do so much more to get money from them.
So this is how they're going to do it. Beyond this, they will still look at providing "premium" service rates for quality of service assurances.
Not to mention they will still QoS competitive products down. This will stifle innovation, as companies such as Netflix, who want to start online delivery, will now not be able to be as successful. Your freedom of choice to choose who you get content from is now limited to precisely your cable company because guess what? They aren't going to be metering your cable TV as part of the internet service.
Time-Warner Sued By A Bazillion Customers Over Bandwidth Charges
.....seriously, I don't think TWC would be stupid enough to deliberately install spyware on its subscribers' computers, but this will fail as soon as hundreds of thousands of clueless Windows users running zombie botnet boxes start cancelling their service en masse "because they jacked up the price". This is not the way to either fix broadband usage policy nor to stop botnets.
$slashdot_user writes: "Time-Warner today was served with a class-action lawsuit from nearly every single subscriber to its metered internet service, launched in June. The suit claims that Time-Warner willingly and complicitly installed spyware onto its subscribers' computers to run up bandwidth charges. The program, which affected primarily Windows-based computers, repeatedly downloaded and uploaded a 1.5 MB file of random, uncompressable data up to a thousand times per hour each way, causing subscribers' caps of 5 GB to be reached within hours. Further GB of bandwidth was charged at $1 each, with some subscribers receiving 'overage' bills stretching upwards of $700. Representatives for Time-Warner were unavailable for comment."
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
In Australia the plans are usually for bandwidth/month, so you pay according to line speed, GB/month etc, but it's fairly uncommon (except for wireless broadband) to be charged for excess usage (they just drop the speed to something painful like 64kbps).
Many of the ISP's have unmetered content, such as local mirrors for major linux distro's, file repositories and some entertainment related stuff. So, for example, all the Ubuntu updates for our computers are not metered - in some circumstances that's VERY useful (eg: an office with 10 computers).
But Australia's internet is a horrible state of affairs generally - just putting in our experience here FWIW.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
Actually, the reason there will BT throttling and other restrictions on using the PC as a media device is because almost NO ONE in America knows it. Try discussing these issues with anyone who's not a regular on /. and watch the glassy stares they give back to you.
If everyone in America knew what was happening there would be a hue and a cry to do something about it, just like with health care or gas prices.
Seen from the country I live in, all this is just unbelieveable.
...
We have ADSL lines with speed up to 28Mb DL (remove ATM overhead) for prices starting at 18â per month.
No cap, no bullshit, nothing.
Usually for a higher price (starting at 29â), you get unlimited phone calls to many countries (japan, us, europe, etc...) and video over IP (TV, video on demand, other funky services)
All this without even talking about fiber which is being deployed, and cable.
I cannot understand how the country where the internet was born is going this way
Looks like there is either no competition, or no incentive to upgrade the network.
Good question, why doesn't Comcast add up all the time in the commercials I watch and subtract that percentage of time from my bill
Quite the contrary. Comcast will soon be introducing a "Promotional Materials Viewing Fee", since after all you are watching their Intellectual Property. They plan on charging you a very modest 55 cents per commercial per view. Of course for $10 a month you can view all their ads an unlimited number of times per month.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I'm paying $90/month for a dedicated server, 24/7 amazing tech support and 1.2TB bandwidth per month. How is $60/month for no dedicated server, crappy tech support and 40GB/month (0.04TB) any where near a reasonable offer?
I've got no problem with heavy users paying more, light users paying less. But $1/gigabyte is so far in excess of the "going rate" for bandwidth that it's not even funny.
For instance, my current web hosting provider offers me 5 TERAbytes of transfer for six bucks a month. Now, it's possible they'd try to change the terms of the deal if I actually approached that level of usage, but still, it shows the cable company in TFA is charging more by roughly a factor of 1000.
I'm guessing that Dreamhost probably serves up roughly as many bytes as a cable company does in a large town or small city. Now, I totally agree that providing internet access to a bunch of houses spread out over square miles is going to cost more than providing it to a couple rows of rackmounted servers. But that's a *fixed* cost to provide access, regardless of bandwidth usage.
I'm okay with charging more for using more, but this is so out of proportion it's simply highway robbery.
Slashdot really needs a +1 Scary, because I laughed at first, then thought you were serious and realized that Comcast might actually do some sort of shit like this.
I talked to a TimeWarner rep when I lived in San Antonio last summer and he told me that they've had the infrastructure for 15mbps connections in place for a year or two, but cap the speeds between 5-10 on purpose. The "purpose", I see now, is that they want to try and milk every penny out of us for something that wouldn't cost them any more to deliver. I imagine it actually costs them money to cap our bandwidth anyway, so this is pretty dumb...especially now that I live in a market with another major provider (AT&T) for competition.
Looks like there is either no competition, or no incentive to upgrade the network. Competition is so 20th century. In the Bush era, we've learned that the purpose of government is to give corporations whatever they want.
This has boosted us to the dizzying heights of... 16th in broadband penetration in the industrialized world.
And falling.
Back in the 90s, the telecom companies swore up and down if we just deregulated them and gave them all kinds of tax incentives, they'd wire the country like crazy. Actually promised us--get this--45 meg symmetric, not just download, to 80% of US households by (wait for it)...
2006
Of course, the deal was meant to be enforced by the FCC which under Bush said, "Whatever you want, we're taking a nap."
So we end up with situations like the one I'm in. I live in a small town outside the capitol of Texas where folks fleeing the city have been moving for some years so they could have an actual tree in their yard but it's not too long a commute into the city.
Fastest growing county in the entire state. Tons of people from the city with jobs and money. What's AT&T (or whatever they're calling themselves this week) done about DSL?
Nothing. Flat out nothing. Zero. Zip. Nada. Not a single upgrade to the CO in years, no build out, nothing.
It doesn't even make good business sense. But, there it is.
They do, however, spend tons on advertising. My landline is with them so every couple of months, I get marketed at about DSL. It's great! It's wonderful! It's fast! Get it! Get it now!
I always say, "Sure! Sign me up!"
The marketeer happily tippy taps his keyboard then slows down and finally says, "Um... you can't get DSL."
"No, really? Gee, maybe you ought to freaking think about building out in the, you know, fastest growing county in the entire blasted state BEFORE you call me again."
(slam phone)
Yeah, it's petty. But it makes me feel better.
My WinXP (kept for gaming only, Linux for everything else) got infected with a spambot (hazards of having children), and I came home one day to find my service shut off. Several hours of calling around to various departments later they informed me that I would have to get my computer "professionally cleaned" before they would reconnect me. Like the "professionals" wouldn't do exactly the same things I did to fix the problem. A bit of social engineering, and accusing them of scanning my system without permission (they didn't, they were monitoring the quantity of outgoing emails) and I convinced them to turn it back on.
That being said, the US is horribly backwards in telcom because they corps know the average citizen has no idea how much they are being screwed. Paying for cell minutes and long distance, when it costs the company no more to route my call across the country than it does to the house next door? And now extra for bandwidth, when only 5% of their customers are using anywhere near the max? [quote from the radio on the way to work this morning]
If Time-Warner tries to implement this in my area, I'm finding another provider. I really don't feel like explaining to my son that he can't play Xbox Live because we "went over our minutes".
It's time Americans woke up and insisted that we stop being ripped off. Flat rates for phone service, flat rates for internet, and at reasonable prices. Either that, or stop claiming we are "more technologically advanced" than the rest of the world, because nonsense like this is proving on a daily basis that we are being left behind.
All the US has is monopoly areas. That's because our fucked-up government handed out monopolies on phone service way back when, and "deregulation" doesn't help anything but picking who bills your phone service: all they do is "lease" your particular line from the company that owns it.
For example:
#1 - In my old apartment, I could only get DSL. DSL was only available through SBC. I could get phone service from any one of 5 phone providers, but SBC was the only one that could provide DSL, because SBC owned the lines and the DSL routers - and if I went with phone from one of the other phone companies, then I couldn't get DSL because SBC required an "active phone account" before providing the DSL service.
#2 - Where I live now, we can't get DSL (no router close enough). We can only get cable from Comcrap, because they have a monopoly on cable TV service in the area. When I called Verizon about FiOS, I was told - surprise surprise - that FiOS will ONLY ever be available in places where Verizon owns the phone line infrastructure. So, my options are now either (a) Comcrap cable modem or (b) shitty satellite service with >2000ms pings.
The kicker? I asked my elected representative why this is allowed, and they said that there is "national competition" between the phone companies... meanwhile, the gov't sits back and allows monopoly abuse by the data providers all over the fucking place.
In the big metropolitan area I live in, we get radio ads trying to get people to "switch" between cable modem and DSL all the time. Yet looking over the map, less than 10% of the people even exist in an area where DSL and cable modem services overlap. It's all a big fraud.
Ah yes, AT&T. I'll keep this short :-)
I've been waiting for AT&T Uverse to become available in my neighborhood to provide some competition to Time/Warner. I got a flyer in the mail saying that Uverse was was now available to me. I logged onto the web site and tried to order it. It took me several tries to actually place an order because I followed the instructions that said that my driver's license expiration date had to be entered in mmyyyy format. The day before the install date, I had to reschedule due to a sick family member. No problem, the new installation date was verbally confirmed with me by the CSR on the phone. On the day of the install, I waited and waited. 30 minutes after the close of the 2 hour installation window, I called and was informed that I was scheduled for installation the NEXT day. The next day the install tech comes out and asks to look in my back yard. No problem. I've got both the cable and phone boxes in my yard for about 6 houses in my neighborhood. While the tech is standing there looking somewhat confused, I say, "If your looking for the network interface, there insn't one. We've never had a landline at this address." The tech then tells me that a different tech has to install the network interface and run the drop to it and asks if they could reschedule the install for Monday. I say that's fine, but Monday is a holiday, and asked if they really did installations on holidays. The tech said yes and told me that someone would be by after 19:00 that day to install the network interface and run the drop.
No tech shows up that day to install the network interface and run the drop, so the first thing Monday morning, I call AT&T and tell them that it wasn't installed and asked if it would be installed prior to the tech arriving to do the install. I was informed that they didn't do installs on holidays and they rescheduled my install for the next day and assured me that both the install tech would be there and the person to do the network interface installation and run the drop.
The next day, the install tech showed up and I asked him where the other tech was who was going to do the network interface installation and run the drop. He got a funny look on his face and went outside to make a phone call. He returned and said that the other tech was on the way. While we waited for the other tech, I showed im the 2 TVs that needed set top boxes and where I wanted their router installed to connect into my network wiring. The other tech arrived and they started working. About 15 minutes later, they had the network interface installed and the drop run and then things got REAL quiet for about 15 minutes and suddenly a third AT&T person showed up. It turns out that Uverse has a max length of 3,000 feet from their box in the subdivision to the house and we were 3,400 feet away.
Our subdivision is less than 5 years old, so I asked who decided to lay out their cable in such a manner that almost everyone on my street would be unable to have Uverse service and they admitted it was one of their engineers.
So, the end result is that most of the people on my street in the subdivision can't have Uverse service and AT&T spent who knows how much money figuring it out. Oh, and I'm still getting solicitations for Uverse. Maybe I should order it again. Maybe I should order it every time I get a solicitation until they stop sending me solicitations.
Without the 2nd Amendment, the others are just suggestions.
starts at the very beginning.
The fact of the matter is that bandwidth is a scarce good (in an economic sense; we have quite a lot of it actually, but not enough to serve everyone at high usage).
Actually, most people have no effing clue what bandwidth really is. You prove how clueless you are by calling it a "scare good."
So how de we ensure that bandwidth can be apportioned fairly across users?
Bandwidth is not a commodity as such. Unlike most commodities, it cannot be stored for future use. It is entirely a function of the momentary capability of the attached routing system. It's much like telephone systems in that regard; there are only a certain amount of circuits ("lines") that a particular neighborhood or area can have active at a given time.
We can make sure that people pay for the bandwidth they use, by metered sale or by tiered pricing.
And here is where it gets stupid. If you sell someone "X GB/month", then people will STILL get fucked over when they try to use the "bandwidth" (actually, absurd data capacity) they bought during a time when others are doing the same. Tiered plans are in place NOW for most providers, and the companies are lying to us about what they sold anyways - the "up to X kbits/second" tier usually isn't even doing as well as the next tier below.
And this says nothing of the off-period times when most sane people are at work or asleep. You're charging people the same price for the "scarce" times (similar to the daytime cell rates) as for the rates when the routers are just sitting more or less idle.
This is where the crackheads in corporate accounting offices and management start drooling - they can set up a complicated pricing scheme that the normal consumer barely understands, and get away with tagging in all sorts of hidden fees. I for one think the companies should be held responsible for upgrading their network and fulfilling the service they contracted for rather than trying to wiggle out of it after they overbooked.