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Time Warner Expanding Internet Transfer Caps To New Markets
Akido37 writes "Time Warner Cable is expanding its transfer capping program to new markets in Rochester, NY, Austin, TX, San Antonio, TX, and Greensboro, NC. It seems they have been testing plans with 5, 10, 20, or 40GB of data transfer per month, with prices ranging from $30 to $55 a month. BusinessWeek quotes Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt saying, 'We need a viable model to be able to support the infrastructure of the broadband business ... We made a mistake early on by not defining our business based on the consumption dimension.' Ars Technica adds, 'The BusinessWeek article notes that only 14 percent of users in TWC's trial city of Beaumont, Texas even exceeded their caps at all. My own recent conversations with other major ISPs suggest that the average broadband user only pulls down 2-6GB of data per month as it is. One the one hand, this suggests that caps don't really bother most people; on the other, it indicates that low cap levels aren't needed to keep traffic 'reasonable' since it's actually quite low to begin with.'"
Only 40Gb/month on the top plan? Here in the UK, TalkTalk's "free with any reasonably expensive phone package" ADSL is 40Gb/month... though it's not really enough these days, thanks to stuff like iPlayer.
According to 77Punker,
I think the submitter reached their cap.
Time Warner has an interest in keeping media businesses under control, therefore it cannot allow streaming services to gain traction. Video streaming in HDTV quality will easily reach these limits, but almost no other internet usage will.
I don't even know what you could do with 5gb a month. I have dd-wrt running on my router and UPLOAD more than 5gb a month using email and AIM to chat.
Whale
The poster fell into a comma.
.sig withheld by request
...there is going to be a broadband ISP worse than Comcast. I only wonder why they are expanding the test to larger markets where they don't have significant competition from other ISPs
What, did Soulskill hit his cap or something? DAMN YOU TIME WARNER CABLE FOR KEEPING ME IN SUSPENSE!
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
Caps are to stop the heaviest users, not the lightest ones. That 14% (which is a lot, not a little) that exceeded their caps are the ones they are targeting. That 14% ties up the majority of the bandwidth and light users get poorer service because of it.
For the record, I have always been one of the top users of every ISP I've ever been with. I was '#1 abuser' for the smalltown ISP I had back 12-15 years ago. I haven't ever let up. (Yes, that's what the ISP called me to my face.)
Overall, their customers are going to be a LOT happier without caps... Caps make customers worried about extra charges on their bill. Most customers will pick a slightly higher priced 'unlimited' plan over one with a cap, even if they would never hit the cap even on crazy months.
Time Warner will figure this out again soon when their competitors get a good hold on their market.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
14% of users going over the proposed limit is a lot. This means one out of seven. In contrast, Comcast has a cap of 250 GB, and cites figures of around 1%. As web-based video services continue to grow in popularity, I can only imagine the amount of people having issues with their cap. Maybe this will be just the thing to spark some competition!
Member of the 7 Digit UID Club
As people start to get movies and TV shows via the Internet, they're moving away from cable TV content. Cable wants to maintain their monopoly. It's time to get the Justice Department looking at this.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
FUCK. THAT. Thankfully I don't have Time Warner. Unfortunately I do have Concast. I already got warned once for being over my 250GB limit. Since they want to charge me $7/mo more for an HD converter box (that I can't buy anywhere, only rent from them) that my tv does natively (and at a higher resolution over the air than what they send compressed) and I actually pay for. The basic subscription I pay for includes HD channels but I can't watch them unless I pay for the converter box or plug the cable straight into my tv and lose the ability to watch On Demand programs. So I download the programs I do want to watch in high def.
Want a good comparison? Take the amount of time the average customer spends per month watching tv. Calculate the relative bitrate for a tv program (including commercials) adjusting for resolution, multiply it by the average viewing time, and I guarantee you it will be greater than the any of the current bandwidth caps. Bandwidth caps are bullshit. They're just another way to milk more money out of the consumer. The system can handle it. If they need more bandwidth for the whole network, light up the dark fiber and/or upgrade the infrastructure we already paid for years ago.
Well add that to my list of ISP's I won't touch.
Comcast allows 250 GB, this makes them look fantastic.
I don't really object to a super low plan for less, but 40 GB is a low max. I've done that with legal content plenty of times. I can imagine getting there binging on youtube and hulu even.
This looks more like an attack on their competition (internet eating away at TV viewing), than a need to meet customer demands.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
They're attempting to force "heavy users" to pony up for bandwidth that already exists in abundance in their network.
My own ISP started bandwidth capping in the last year and a half and cut me down to 60GB without notice and I was pissed. Personally I wouldn't be surprised if the *IAA's of the world are influencing these decisions.
I live in Greensboro, NC and this really makes no sense as there is two larger cities in NC and it has no mention of these. Hell, you would think Atlanta would be on the list but nope, we've used Road Runner for 5 or so years now and they've always been great but this news will change that.
So what about those who play games online through PC or X-Box 360? For example: if someone played WOW 6 hours each day for an entire month, what would it's monthly data transfer be?
Life is not for the lazy.
This is so clearly Bait & Switch that TW should be proscuted within an inch of their corporate lives. Their top officers should be in jail, to wit:
1: Promise unrealistic, unlimited downloads and speeds that discourage all competition.
2: Once you have the monopoly and the consumer has nowhere else to go, bring in onerous download caps that actually reflect the basic capabilities of your pitiful system.
3: Buy off Washington so that you won't be punished for #1 and #2.
4: PROFIT!
The really Big Lie in all of this is that the argument for caps is that the system only has a very limited capability. Yet WITHOUT CHANGING OUT A SINGLE PIECE OF HARDWARE you can get a much higher cap simply by paying a much higher amount of money. Where did all that extra bandwidth come from? Clearly cable companies lie like rugs, and the public and regulatory agencies continue to buy into those lies as we're all being screwed over!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
This must be a last ditch effort in avoiding doing actual work.
I think we need to rally and stop this now, or be faced with the potential for multi-billion dollar personal bailouts to pay for this metered bandwidth bullshit. What's next, eaves drop on my voice call and charge me per-syllable? Please...
Anyone thinking to the contrary obviously isn't paying close attention to the pace at which the size of our information is growing. It already costs more to send less information cell phone to cell phone than from the earth to the Hubble Space Telescope. Looking back 10 years, applying the same pricing schemes, $30/mo for 40mb would turn todays pricing into $3000/mo for 40gb. Conversely, $30/mo for 40gb today, would mean in 10 years $3000/mo for 4tb.
Fair? No. Retarded? Yes. Fixable? Hopefully.
Cox cable (Hampton Roads) has download/upload bandwidth caps based on what level of service you have.
At my current service level, it is 40Gb down, 15 up per month. Speeds of 10/2, which is quite consistent.
The strange thing is, I know I exceed this regularly. And have never gotten any notice about it, or seen a throttling of speed.
oops, I did it now.
According to Ars Technica, the editors screwed up again ;-). If you compare this to the original Firehose entry, it's completely rewritten, and the trailing "According to Ars Technica," is a leftover from that.
I am sick of this crap. This is not natural gas or water or electricity. Data bits are not physical products that need to be produced.
If there is a problem with some customers being cut off due to someone else's 20 Xmen Origin torrents, i can understand; but just to throttle it to create a stream of revenue pisses me off.
Those routers will handle 10GB the same as it will 20GB.
We should use this as an opportunity to convince as many TimeWarner customers as possible to install ad-blocking software, on the argument that if they don't they are more likely to exceed their cap. Perhaps we could develope a modified OpenWRT or similar type router that blocked as much of that as possible, and convince people to install it.
My own recent conversations with other major ISPs suggest that the average broadband user only pulls down 2-6GB of data per month as it is.
And, in the days of 56.6kbps modems, just about no one pulled down 100MB of data per month. Why don't we cap it there?
Oh yeah... because we actually like society advancing not staying stagnant.
Just because most users don't, currently, constantly bang up against capacity limits, that's no reason to cap them at it to ensure they will as their usage patterns grow. Well, OK, it is if you're terrified their usage patterns are going to include cancelling your hugely profitable cable TV service and watching their content online. Which, let's face it, is the real reason these caps are getting introduced almost exclusively by organizations who don't want you able to circumvent their other business model.
That doesn't follow at all. Low level caps are needed so that the very few don't abuse the network. Data that the average broadband user doesn't abuse the system means that the very few are spoiling it for the rest of us. Cue the Bit Torrent whiners.
Also, I forgot to mention, in the past 8 months they've increased our bill two seperate times, $3 each time. So...they're charging more and your bill goes up, but now we're going to be capped. What a wonderful business model.
I think I might call them here in a little bit.
The reason they want to cap is so once streaming video becomes main stream, and 40 gig is not enough, they can make more money charging for a higher connection. Then they can start doing things like buy their content and it wont count against your cap. It's all a plain get more $$ for doing nothing.
It's neither here nor there, but I recently switched away from Time Warner in Austin. My cancellation call included the sales speech that they didn't cap usage like some other plans. I resisted the urge to tell her that Time Warner would be soon, because they're following the trends.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
IMO they want to milk their existing network rather than upgrade to todays standards of data transfer (illegal or not) and a cap does that with the guise of "piracy is an issue" in addition it wouldn't surprise me a bit if the RIAA and MPAA had a hand in this as it benefits them as well.
We need regulation on broadband ownership and split these corps up to foster some competition, other wise we will all be using 3G and 6 MB cable well into the future.
Just my opinion.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I am sick of slow cable modem service in the evening when everyone gets on at the same time. Time Warner is a shared service, but DSL is a per user service.
That's 1 in 7 people using their service, hardly an "only" that can be ignored.
Hell, I use over 5GB/mo on my friggin iPhone and I'm not even tethering!
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
We need a viable model to be able to support the bureaucracy of the communication business
Fix'd.
Because everyone knows how unprofitable the communications industry is. Poor things. Even breaking up Ma Bell resulted in several companies swelling each to many times Ma Bell's original size in under 30 years. Yep, a very unprofitable business. I almost feel like donating something to them via paypal, poor fools.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
... offering an affordable, open (as in some way to get the recordings off) DVR service? The standard DVR isn't bad, but when you run into the space limitation, you have to get rid of something. If they offered something that would allow you to either copy the shows to another system, or burn them to DVD, that could be a step in the right direction.
At least, if the number of people I hear about downloading huge torrents of movies and TV shows are any indication.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
1Mbs per second for a decent video, for an hour.
so...I watch 1 hour per day....and we get 21G +/- a month.
I'm capped at 200GB. I probably would use 250~300 or so were I not capped atm i hit 185~198(close call). Honestly with just 1 or 2 users without running a big server it is more than enough (at the moment). It is enough for unlimited chat/browsing. You can get every new movie that comes out lets say 15 a month. In addition you can get a few thousand songs and maybe 10 seasons of tv. Maintain an even upload ratio. And still have a bit left over. Unfortunately they are offering 1/40th of that making them totally useless.
/.ers aren't part of their market. I think they should spread out just so that their is more competition for our business not less. But that is ok something will pop up to replace them, even if it is on their rented lines.
That said. I'm ok with this. Let them, clearly
[the fact that most people don't exceed the caps] indicates that low cap levels aren't needed to keep traffic "reasonable" since it's actually quite low to begin with.
If the few who are exceeding the caps are putting out five times as much traffic as the rest of the crowd, then no, traffic is not low to begin with.
I believe as strongly as anybody that the telcos and cable companies are out to screw the little guy at every opportunity (see the nonsense fees and charges added to every bill, instead of them being honest and including those in the advertised price), but paying for what you use is not a bad concept. In the long run, it will make internet access cheaper as they put more bandwidth in the high traffic areas (the same areas that will make them the most money under this plan), as long as there is viable competition encouraging them to keep the prices in check. I know competition isn't where it should be in ISP-land right now, but the wireless companies are starting to make some significant moves that should shake the scene up.
It should be illegal to say that freedom of speech should be limited.
Wait, that place is their test location? Has anyone actually BEEN to Beaumont? I spent a couple months there and would be surprised to learn that 14% of the people know how to use a computer.
Let's fight this, Austinites. My gf and I are engineers, and we VNC into work on weekends and for late nights, and we use more than 2GB/month just on that.
Here's the letter I'm sending to my senators and representatives. I need to figure out who to send it to at Time Warner and the Statesman. (The big newspaper, for out-of-towners.) I'm looking for advice and critique and sources for some of the arguments I've heard here. (Look for the [brackets])
Dear ________,
I am an electrical engineer with *company*, and like many engineers in the emerging high-tech center of Austin, I rely on high-speed Internet connections to my home. In these times of economic hardship, it is more important than ever for working professionals to be able to access work computers and other information quickly and economically.
Time Warner Cable has announced that they are implementing tight limits on the amount of information that they will provide to users of their cable modem services. While Austin's workers attempt to reach a compromise between work and family life by accessing critical business operations over the Internet, Time Warner plans to restrict their networks for these heavy users. They are instituting these caps in spite of the fact that a vast capacity of their fiber-optic lines remain unused, and in [year], Congress gave [millions] of dollars to cable companies to improve our nation's digital infrastructure.
For Time Warner to pocket this investment and make no improvements, then attempt to extort outrageous fees that infrastructure from Austin area workers, is outrageous. Only the fact that there is no significant competition for broadband access allows cable companies to unilaterally impose these restrictions on those of us who depend on the Internet for our livelihood. As Congress has given heavily to cable companies and has seen no improvements, I would urge you to closely examine the stranglehold this company has upon Austin's digital infrastructure and the abuse of monopoly power that this upcoming cap represents.
I look forward to your quick action in this matter, [and I anticipate supporting you in [your next election] (for elected officials) ].
*OpenGLFan*
This is being done because Time Warner is absolutely terrified of Hulu gaining traction, and is grabbing at any weak option for any possible way to stop Hulu from becoming the dominant source for watching television. A tiny, easily-exhausted cap of 40 gig a month with hefty penalty fees for going over will stop people from migrating from pay-cable to a Hulu-only model. Even Comcast gives 250gig a month -- this isn't even 20% the size of the Comcast bandwidth limit. Christ.
This is nothing but a completely transparent attempt to prop up cable's dying business model. If they can strangle Hulu to death with ridiculously tiny bandwidth allowances, they'll be popping the champagne corks.
Every time this comes up, I think that I really should find a way to accurately measure how much bandwidth I'm using. We have three computers in my household. (Well, four, but the fourth is never used.) A desktop computer upstairs used as a file/print server and to downloading log files. My wife's laptop which she uses most of the day. And finally, my work laptop which I bring home with me at the end of the day. Unfortunately, my router is older and doesn't support log files. (It claims to, but then doesn't give a way to get at those log files.) I could install an application to track our usage on each computer, but then I'd not only have to add it all up, but would need to turn the application off while I'm at work. (Since that bandwidth usage wouldn't count.) I might just need to get a new router. Any suggestions for an inexpensive wireless/wired router that will allow me to track how much bandwidth I use per month?
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
I've used capped Net access for most of my life (having lived in countries that don't have the misadvertising of "unlimited"), and all of them had higher caps for lower prices. Currently, here in British Columbia, I get a 60Gb cap for $30 (Canadian, obviously) a year. In Moscow, I paid $50 for real unlimited (or at least never hit the cap, even with heavy downloading - so it must have been in excess of 100Gb - and I do not know anyone else who hit the cap and was asked to stop).
I live in Beaumont, TX. I have ATT 3.0/512 (supposedly). My parents here have TWC, and thus far I haven't heard anything from them about a cap. Not that they would go over.
FTA, ATT is also capping here, albeit at 250GB. I guess they're both doing trials here in Beaumont because it's plain to see that we're some of the most goose-stepping fucking people in the world, and we love to get anally raped, as long as the rapist has a badge, a robe, or a government granted monopoly. It's 250GB now, what will it be in 5 years? Not to mention all the other crap that ATT pulls. If we ever decide to pull our heads out and break out the ammo box, then government granted monopolies need to be on the list.
You know what sucks? Watching hulu and seeing the ads telling me to "Demand FiOS". Indeed verizon, I do demand it. So what's the deal?
New rule: if your options are just the telco and the cableco, you'll have to get a T1 if you don't want your connection screwed with and need decent speed.
I opened my mailbox yesterday to some junk mail that actually caught my eye. Embarq is now offering DSL service to people who don't have or want a home phone line. Suddenly there's competition that makes sense, so if TWC wants to apply a bandwidth cap that my household exceeds then I'm changing providers.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
Most of the arguments for the cap is that granny is paying a little more than she uses and grandson pays a bit less. Now you could ask granny: hey, your bastard grandson is using modern technology more than you and the cost is shared because of un-transparent pricing of telcos.
I don't know how it is in mighty USA, but in my place granny would kick you in the nuts just for the question an say it is fine as it is.
Actually, there were plenty of capped and flatrate packages around here some time ago. Nobody wanted caps, so they get rare.
Also, maybe I'm a bit mistaken, but I was thinking that we entered the 21st century, the age of information society a few years back. On the other hand, if I follow the current trend, then we will use telex in a few years again.
Am I really think I'm the only geek that think caps really aren't a bad idea. Although they can be implemented correctly and implemented horribly.
First of all there is the wrong way to implement caps. Companies implements caps to try and push their average revenue up for the majority of customers. This is the main reason why I believe Cable TV as a service will nearly die over the next 10 years. Cable companies keep charging more for the same channels and happen to push "popular" channels up to higher tiers replacing them with unpopular channels. If caps are implemented where today's unlimited turned into the lowest capped tier (5-20gb) at the same price, then customers are screwed in the short term.
Then there is the correct way to implement caps, with pricing. I would be more then willing to accept a 5GB cap if I was paying $10 a month for internet. I can change my usage for a cheaper price. Even right now I have 768k internet because it is only $20 a month. If caps correlated with pricing this would be a win for everyone.
Consider the pricing plans 5gb - $10, 20gb - $20, 100gb $40, 500gb $80, Unlimited Business Line $200. Honestly this seems to solve the problem of "excess" bandwidth users and pricing.
For too long have ISP advertised based on speed and not real bandwidth. The real solution to this is to pass a law saying that all advertising of Internet Connection speed must be accompanied by the "continuous" usage speed (continuous usage = cap per month divided by seconds in a month). This continuous usage speed must be equal or more obvious to the consumer (based on size of font or time shown). Think about "New Time Warner 20MBPS (.0001 MBPS continuous usage) internet!" compared to a truely unlimited connection "New ATT 6MBPS (6 MBPS continuous usage) internet!"
from a TWC rep on twitter: Time Warner wants to hear from you about Consumption Based Billing in Tx email at realideas@twcable.com
You report, Slashdot decides
Prevueing you're poast ownly hellps iff ewe no how two spel inn teh furst plase
The whole point of a good snare is to put it in place without being noticed or felt. I'd like to think Time Warner will be very reasonable and rational about placing the limits. Put them where only 1, or 2, or 10% of the customers ever exceed them. 3+ standard deviations above the mean, etc. Something easily rationalized to a technically minded consumer.
But then the bean counters and MBAs will roll in. No matter where the limits are placed, they will try to find a way to squeeze out more profit and provide less service. Profit optimization. More and more people will find they have somehow tripped one of the new magic "penalty" clauses that will pop up every month. As more and more video and entertainment apps come along, its guaranteed that downloads and download volume will increase over time. Suddenly, you are an "excessive" user, and the jacked up rates apply.
The cost to (to the company) do so will decrease, but the price to the consumer will be driven by corporate desire for profit. And seeing as cable company internet service is nearly a monopoly, what are the chances they will drop prices as their own costs drop?
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
just playing World of warcraft can hit 10GB ombined up and down per month. I was on verizons national access broadband 10GB limit plan, and I hit it in 4 hours of playing WoW. So if i have a 40GB limit, than i only get 16 hours of play? WTF, i will play on dial up instead, so i can play as much as i want.
I always hear about a small percentage of people with high usage spoiling it for the rest, but 14% running up against the caps during their trial is 1 out of 7 people, not a small percentage. If that many are hitting the ceiling already, I would say that the cap is set too low. In my household, with multiple computers, ipods, game consoles, and other devices all consuming data, I would be up against it in no time.
Caps don't bother people? It bothered me enough to switch to an ISP that didn't have bandwidth caps.
I have nothing compelling to say
40Gb should be enough for everybody.
I interviewed Alex Dudley, VP of PR for Time Warner Cable at Network Performance Daily on this. I tried to be impartial, but as I mention in the intro, this would raise my bill 500%, and would be a 1000% markup from Time Warnerâ(TM)s wholesale rate, and as TW is a monopoly in my apartment complex, the net effect is that Iâ(TM)m getting kicked out of my home when the billing goes live, so the interview gets heated at points. FTA:
Previously, I wrote on how bandwidth caps have a chilling effect on Internet participatory culture.
I used to work for NetQoS. I no longer do, but want to keep the excellent karma attached to this account.
Does anyone else notice these guys are out to make more money without really producing anything at all?
1. find a way to make people pay more for less
2. ???
3. profit!
Just googling around a little it seems that you can get T1 internet service for around $250-$350. I don't know that you could convince them to drop a line to a residential area, but the premium might be worth it for an SLA, a block of real IPs, no dictated terms of how you use your connection and not having to wrap your lips around TW/Comcast's cock each month for your internet service.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Most of this discussion has been about downloading or streaming video (or playing games), which naturally is a big bandwidth consumer.
How about the people, whose computers are running spambots and send huge amounts of spam email? Within the last week, we were told, that spam is up to 94% of all 'net traffic. I wonder, which world we really live in...
It's natural in a way, that cable companies try to protect their soon-to-be obsolete business models. What this is a lesson in is, that monopolies are bad for consumers. In the end, they are bad for the monopoly owners, too, because they end up destroying their business by relying on their ability to charge over the top without giving customer satisfaction.
Bandwidth is obviously not an unlimited resource, it's a bit like rail or road networks - you have certain expensive infra to permit a certain level of service, but using the service itself doesn't cost that much. TWC obviously wants to avoid having to invest in their infra for the foreseeable future (for corporate jockeys that's narrowing from the next quarter to the next 6 weeks).
My ISP promises me 10MBps (fiber optic in the building basement, with VDSL up from there - they say they could easily give me 100MBps, but I don't want to fork over the cash), and usually delivers at least that. But then I have a choice of many different ISPs with different pricing plans. Nobody has even mentioned caps in broadband connections.
Every problem has a solution that is simple, easy and wrong. Selling our Liberty for a little Security is a much too de
I see this a different way. Since most users barely use their connection they should get a discount... not the other way around.
In other news... Ford has found out that most people only go on average 35mph during a month. Since nobody needs to go much faster than that Ford has decided to put smaller engines in all cars by default that only go 40 mph at the same price as existing models. If you want to go faster you will need an upgraded engine at a premium.
Does the Time Warner Movies On Demand bandwidth to download a movie on cable count towards your max? My guess is no since this is strictly a cable TV download to your cable box.
BUT if I use my AppleTV or Netflix to download a HDTV movie at 8GB a pop, I'm quickly going to blow my Internet monthly cap. In my opinion, this clearly is something the Justice department should investigate since it gives another department of the same company an unfair advantage in the marketplace.
We currently have Frontier DSL and if this happens to Rochester and it's surrounding areas we definitely wont be going to TWC. It may be faster, but we do a lot of media uploading, our pictures not illegal, and we can go beyond the 5GB limit in a single weekend. I guess they just don't want our business.
I just installed an internet backup service. My initial backup is about 250gb. If there was a 5gb a month limit, it would take me over 2 years to backup my system. And after that, my internet traffic is essentially doubled for anything I download that I'd want backed up (me downloading it and then me uploading it again for backup). Unless others follow suit, TW will have problems from the telcos who aren't as reliant on the cable revenue or spreading a lot higher bandwidth out there (like Verizon FiOS). TW is just trying to see how much longer they can try and force people to use the old infrastructure. Why give people a better experience if you can force them to use what they already have or force them to use even less?
5, 10, 20, and 40GB with 40GB being the top plan? These are plans appropriate for cell phones, not computers let alone entire households. I thought the Comcast 250GB plan should have been 300GB. 10GB a day seems fair to me. The TWC numbers are absurd.
These numbers are unrealistic and out of touch with the trend for moving everything to the cloud. Think this will be good for Hulu, Netflix, and the Itunes Store? How about the Xbox Live store where you can download many Multi GB games? How about Flickr? How about the growing trend of people who are giving up traditional TV and now using the Internet only as their source for Video entertainment?
And the pricing? $30 to $55 is way out of line for what you get. Any more then $9-$15 a month for the 5GB-10GB plans is out of line. When my family moves next, anywhere that is stuck with TWC as their sole provider will be completely off the list of possibilities. That is how important reasonable internet access is to me.
When Comcast announced their Cap to what had previously been unlimited access, we all feared others would adopt this model. If TWC goes through with this you can expect others to follow. Let's hope they come to their senses or are run out of business by their competitors, whichever comes first.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
"only" 14% ever exceed?
How about a curve? How many are "this far" from exceeding?
And how about those that transmit almost nothing at all?
This is a back door move to end network neutrality.
A simple solution: regulate the ISPs. They are a utility. They are a must have.
And regulate them now.
Regulation is the best way to control prices at the same time it reduces risk to the provider.
In my opinion the real answer would be to allow multiple cable companies to compete for our business. However, understand that none of the cable companies will look at something that will kill off their current business. Having said that, perhaps ATT would look at that? Competition is great, and Capitalism at its finest.
In my opinion though, this is one of the many reasons Internet TV won't be here for a LONG time. The thought of bringing down a 1080P signal to every household in a block is a long way off.
We'll have to cancel their cable service. Also, I wonder how this will affect existing customers, can they add a cap after the contract?
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
I am a a TWC user. I received two strike letters for downloading movies. They were sent to my TWC email address which I never check. I didn't know they were on to me until they switched off my browsing (all pages were redirected to a nasty warning page and I had to call them to get unblocked).
I'm sure this is why only 14% exceeded the caps because all those are legitimate usages since they're cooperating with the **AA to weed out the undesirable activity
This is just another sign of the fall of capitalism, apart from the financial troubles we are facing today.
While some cities in Asia start to consider offering *free* Internet connections to all citizens in order to promote the use of the Internet for the benefit of the entire society, Americans will need to restrain their Internet usage due to those bloodsucking cable companies whose CEOs (e.g., Glenn Britt at TWC) care nothing but profits. What's a huge setback!
The reason for putting the data cap is absurd. If users have to compete for bandwidth, it means the network sucks---the cable companies haven't installed enough cables and kept their routers up-to-date. This is not an excuse to charge users extra money, because the current cable technology should be able to handle heavy Internet traffic of many users simultaneously.
Furthermore, a simple priority scheme that lowers the priority of packets generated by heavy users should resolve the problem of "light users can't get enough bandwidth" entirely. Why don't the cable companies implement this scheme?
Perhaps Americans should *not* trust the cable companies but consider switching to peer-to-peer ad-hoc network such as MANET, which is originally designed for poor countries whose communication infrastructure is non-existent.
Let's boycott Time Warner Cable.
I am currently signed up for one of their contracts that promises my price will not change for two years. If they implement this, I'm canceling because it changes my terms,and I will NOT pay the termination fee. This is nuts. I'll also probably switch to earthlink which is available over TW's line, but does not have any caps that I know of.
If you're working on the weekend, your work should buy you business class internet access with none of this nonsense. Sorry to play devil's advocate, but you really need a better excuse.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
My email to TW: "I just read this morning where TW plans to implement download caps for its Greensboro area customers. This is my notification to you to cancel my internet service on the day this plan goes into effect. I will be returning to Yadtel.net as my ISP, as they have no caps (and faster speeds)."
If I didn't have absolutely NOTHING to do, I wouldn't be here.
Who can I switch to? I live in Rochester and the phone company apparently has crappy DSL service, and we have no FIOS. I was thinking of going to Speakeasy.net but my recent research is showing that Speakeasy has gotten quite bad in the last year or two. Anybody have any recommendation?
Don't blame me, I voted for Cthulhu.
Why don't they just charge by transfer plus a nominal "infrastuture and support charge" that everyone pays to keep the skeleton staff and core equipment "funded." Let the heavy users pay for their usage and let mom and pop pay for their level of usage. I think it would help the broadboard providers charge competitive costs with the last dial-up holdouts. For most folks, their bill would probably go down.
The major problem is that they've sold it as an all-you-can-eat plan by bits/second not bits/month and now they want to change the rules. Also, the problem is that since cable is a shared connection, one heavy user can drag a segment down, especially if their downloading is non-stop and piss off other customers who get mad when the cable co sold them 5MB/down and they never see over 2. if they sold it by bits consumed and were a little more vauge on the throughput and labeled it as "up to X Mbps", they'd have less customers being bent out of shape because they "aren't getting what they paid for".
The cable providers are just upset because they finally have to deal with "competitors" because for so long, they had no competition in the TV arena, and they're not getting the bang for their buck that they hoped for in upgrading their infrastructure due to slow adoption, high rollout costs and competition from the telcos.
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
Not trying to pick on you, but you might want to reword this sentence befor sending this off:
I singled out 'that', but not knowing for sure where you were going with that, I do not have any suggestions to fix it.
It's not really clear what you are trying to say. I think I get it, but not everyone you send this to may.
Seriously just trying to help out. Your letter will have a little better impact if it is clear and concise.
Overall though, well said, and well done! Just fix that one awkward sentence and you are golden. :-)
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
I average around 500GB of data usage a month on my home connection alone. My options are AT&T DSL which looks like will be capping downloads soon too, and TW Business Class which is 10Mb @ $120/month which requires a year contract and doesn't guarantee to remain cap free throughout the lifetime of my contract. Austin is screwed. :(
The video application explosion of the past 18 months has created what the providers deem their golden right to rape the end users, since they haven't been able to extort money out of the content providers. It kills them that I can download movies from Netflix instead of paying them for PPV movies, they are stuck on the old thinking of a geographic-centric monopoly.
Well crap! I'm not too far from Greensboro, NC -- I'm outside RTP. And in February, a short month, I used a total of over 75GB of bandwidth. Mostly netflix streaming. That's probably exactly what TWC is trying to prevent. What are my other options?
So let me get this straight, alienate 14% of customers to make sure the other 86% can't get decent TV over IP?
Sounds like a good strategy for them until the market speaks and in order to save their business they have to do an about face and pay for damage control PR.
There are legit reasons for using a lot of bandwidth, you know. These 500 message /. threads don't come cheap, after all. Not to mention all these zombied windows game boxes I have here DDoSing all the good guys. Boy, I sure don't want to have to explain why my usage is so high.
> If you're on Time Warner, call and complain. Tell them that as a result of this new policy you are researching alternatives and as soon as you find one you will be canceling service.
I hate to tell you this, but it won't work.
Aussie users made a similar threat when one of our biggest ISP's introduced download caps.
A spokesdroid for the ISP said (paraphrased) "50% of our bandwidth is consumed by 5% of our customers. If they take their business to one of our competitors, we'd be delighted"
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
If your base plan is 10GB/month and the averge user is 4-6GB/month then don't put on any caps. Yes you will get the data transfer whore utilizing 20gb/month but you will keep positive PR. The moment you mention caps you get thousands of people bitchin and moanin even if it never affects them. So why would would want that PR nightmare to stop a handful of data transfer whores?
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
They get to put a crimp in OSS and media streaming at the same time.
You can't be downloading Linux installation DVDs and maintenance, or contributing to Linux development with a low cap.
You can't be viewing streaming video (especially the new 720p content) from sites like Hulu, Youtube, etc., or download media with a low cap.
I hope they are getting financial incentives from Microsoft and the RIAA/MPAA, otherwise it's a wasted strategy. By their own admission, only a small percentage of their customers exceed these low caps, so the infrastructure costs to support them will likely hurt their bottom line and make them less competitive without financial incentives.
In a free market, this should provide an opportunity for small companies and other suppliers. However, in most US markets Internet service is still a single supplier environment.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
Keep in mind that the government gave millions and millions to telcos/cable companies a few years ago to expand their infrastructure and provide better service, and service actually got WORSE overall for doing so.
Kind of like how I predict that when we bail out (insert car company) they'll reduce production models to 2 or 3 of the biggest SUVs they can find and bitch about not making money.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
In Germany, current pricing for 3G mobile online access (for computer usage, not limited to cellphones) starts at ca. $30 for 10GB per month.
one LiveCD image is ~700MB and LiveDVD's are over 1GB. That one download is a pretty big chunk of their lower cap and that is what most home users are going to go with.
I also disagree with that statement that they made a mistake not limiting from the get-go. That is bull because they were competing with dialup and most dialup services where for unlimited bandwidth. The broadband companies got their marketshare by calculating and marketing against the unlimited bandwidth competitor. They are now trying to close the barn door after they trapped the horses inside.
I have a bad feeling about this bandwidth limiting stuff. It could very well spread to VOIP limits and other service/port limitations which will limit who gets to decide what new technology gets into home users hands/computers. Very bad IMO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Please also file a complaint with the ftc and fcc on grounds that they are effectively limiting competition and maintaining their monopoly on entertainment delivery by using their monopoly or at best duopoly on internet service. I'm pretty sure it's a violation of anti-trust law to use one monopoly to gain or maintain another.
Very well put. I too have Netflix and wouldn't mind paying more, but not a ridiculous amount more! I use about 75GB/mo, and I feel I already pay an appropriate amount for that. Create lower, cheaper plans rather than devaluing what's already in place!
I am a college student here in Austin, and this cap is ridiculous; I have already capped out twice. There was never a warning of this either! After the hassle of getting things sorted out, I was told I used 23 gigs in a 4 day period, which I think is pretty common for myself. They said our household was using as much in a week as a normal person in a year.
On top of shutting down your cable signal without warning, they only give you a 800 number to call, and the 800 number is nothing but a voicemail. You must leave your name, account number and phone number, and then they call you back in about a day.
Does this mean I have to cut back on Hulu, internet gaming, Xbox live, torrents, and anything that would be considered essential? A good share of my usage is University related, and I enjoy being able to work from home, rather than a lab in the Petroleum building.
It is very frustrating, and it was very unprofessional to implement the system without warning. I can not wait till U-verse is available in my area!
I find it hard to believe anyone could use that mu
hile some cities in Asia start to consider offering *free* Internet connections to all citizens in order to promote the use of the Internet for the benefit of the entire society, Americans will need to restrain their Internet usage due to those bloodsucking cable companies whose CEOs (e.g., Glenn Britt at TWC) care nothing but profits. What's a huge setback!
The reason for putting the data cap is absurd. If users have to compete for bandwidth, it means the network sucks---the cable companies haven't installed enough cables and kept their routers up-to-date. This is not an excuse to charge users extra money, because the current cable technology should be able to handle heavy Internet traffic of many users simultaneously.
Furthermore, a simple priority scheme that lowers the priority of packets generated by heavy users should resolve the problem of "light users can't get enough bandwidth" entirely. Why don't the cable companies implement this scheme?
Perhaps Americans should *not* trust the cable companies but consider switching to peer-to-peer ad-hoc network such as MANET, which is originally designed for poor countries whose communication infrastructure is non-existent.
Uhm, if you do work with your internet connection then the company you work for needs to pay for your business connection which wont have any limits or limits that are acceptable for your work...
Your personal connection is meant for just that, personal stuff...
So this letter will basically go nowhere.
This has nothing to do with resource demands. It has everything to do with what cable companies perceive to be an untapped resource. If consumption was the problem, then why do I get charged every time I send a 100 byte text message?
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
as someone who has a parltry 10gb data cap, per month, i can tell you that its not nearly enough.
im not a huge downloader, but we regularly approach the limit every month. i watch youtube somewhat heavily (in low detail), game often, and browse the web like any other geek. ive had to hold off downloading linux updates on a fresh install (300mb all up) until next month because, extrapolating, it would take us over our cap. ultimately i would LOVE to stream videos HD quality videos over the net, as my connection speed would definitely allow, but right now it is totally out of my grasp because is the ridiculous data cap.
i think its absolutely disgraceful that the technology is there to allow us to take full advantage of what the internet has to offer, yet its impossible in my country because greedy companies would rather make a ton of cash. unfortunately, theres no other alternative a this stage.
the real answer
The REAL answer would be for someone to install and maintain conduit across the entire city door-to-door, access to which can be leased by anyone wanting to run anything anywhere.
Creating more cable companies isn't the solution to the basic problem of [tinfoil hat on]the death of cable itself being imminent[/tinfoil].
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
after my experience with a bad isp called bell Canada
my dad and 5 friends also moved NONE of those friends uses p2p nor does my dad
get the hint YOUR going to lose a lot more doing this to the top tier guys that are smarter friendly and don't screw people around.
YOUR going to lose cause where they go people will follow. If that means they go everyone goes. GO ahead turn off the net for a summer then.
EVERYONE see then what these jerks do to get you all back and tell granma and dad this must be done and why, that these people are scamming us all and until they offer a reasonable package then screw it.
My experience with clearwire has been TERRIBLE. Throughput is laughably slow, often under 70-75kb/sec. Service is intermittent. They automatically renew a binding one year contract on the last day of each existing contract. Clearwire is not an alternative at all.
Facts have a liberal bias.
What Time Warner loses to me not having cable TV and using Hulu et al. they make back with my internet service. And if they switch to downloads caps they won't even have that.
I'm not really sure what's up with the people here who claim to use no more than a few gig per month, but I'm a remote employee for my company and work over a corporate VPN almost 24/7, as well as downloading large code branches and SDKs on a weekly basis -- not to mention remote backup, videoconferencing, and VoIP. And that's before we get to streaming HD movies to my 360 over Netflix, downloading DLC or demos (which can easily run 300-500MB), or downloading DVDs from Cinematic Titanic (or VOD from Riffrax).
So after normal web surfing, I can easily blow through 40GB in a week, much less a month. And with AT&T following suit, there simply aren't many other options. But picking the Austin market for this phase? Do they not understand who lives in Austin? I think TW may be surprised at the blowback.
Earthlink is a Scientology front, I'd rather give my money to Time Warner and get raped in the ass.
The article says only 14% exceeded the cap in several months of testing. Some of the posts argue that complaining won't work because 50% of capacity is used by 5% of an ISP's users, so the ISP would be thrilled to have them leave. The problem with these comments is that they both assume that the 14% or the 5% are the same people over time, but this isn't necessarily true. The 14% may well be distributed from month to month so almost every user will eventually get hit with a surprise overage charge. This pisses off the customer, who may well leave for a provider who doesn't hit them with surprise fees. Similarly, the 5% who allegedly use 50% of bandwidth aren't necessarily the same next month, so another 5% may be using 50% bandwidth next month. Sure, it's true that some users do use more, on average, than others, but usage can vary quite widely.
Caps on bandwidth use have been in place here for ages - usually at 60gb per month. I avoid streaming videos and excessive downloads, but manage get really close to the cap since others in the house are not as careful.
Online gaming can eat through bandwidth, so we use lower-quality settings where the games support it, and avoid music, etc too.
I have been envious of you in the US since you did not have these caps and could watch your favorite programs, etc online. These caps are crap, but there's not much you can do to stop them.
All you can do is avoid the higher-bandwidth stuff in favor of lower quality or...dare I say it....plain TEXT!
Imagine how quickly your cap will be used up if you use OnLive's upcoming service.
I am an electrical engineer with *company*, and like many engineers in the emerging high-tech center of Austin, I rely on high-speed Internet connections to my home.
TW:
Then you'll be happy to hear about our premium business connections!
Senator/Rep:
Thank you for your concern, the hard working people of [Austin] are very important to me. I take [Technology/Internet] very seriously and will make every effort to resolve this issue.
Is the past. Anyone remember the bad old days of CompuServe or GEnie where you had to pay x$ for x minutes of time each month?
We are heading there again, at 'broadband speed'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
And 640k should be enough for everyone too, right?
The options are pretty simple here -- bandwidth capping or deep packet inspection with traffic shaping. The intertubes are not infinite bandwidth, and they cost money.
To me, the free market bandwidth capping sounds like a vastly superior option.
The pricing may not be efficient at the moment, but at least the free market can address that problem pretty efficiently, eventually. The free market is shithouse for dealing with asymmetric information problems (like the ISPs doing traffic shaping, which the typical customer does not, and should not need to, understand).
On a side note; I like giving my ISP money. They provide an incredibly valuable service. As long as they keep their damned noses out of which 1's and 0's I'm sending, I want to give them lots of money so they build bigger and bigger pipes.
And, think about it -- if we start paying differential prices based on differential bandwidth consumption, where's their profit motive? That's right, in increasing the amount of 1's and 0's we consume. So all of a sudden the ISPs go from hating P2P to loving it. Suddenly the ISPs would be the side of information dissemination, instead of on the information hoarder side. That's a pretty frikkin' good thing, no? Not that I want them corrupting congress in either direction, but if I have to accept corruption, I'd rather have them counterbalancing the intellectual monopoly advocates, who are getting a bit too much of their way lately.
Of course, I'd like to see more competition and more efficient pricing. But that is a separate issue.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
The answer is "upgrade your f***ing network!" And now you are magnifying that "mistake" by imposing a cap decades after EVERYONE has gotten used to not having any cap. ISPs in the US have been providing "unlimited" plans for decades (read: always). TW has been doing the same thing for over a decade, yet NOW -- when people have a reason/need to use what they've been paying for -- your decade old network cannot keep up, and you don't want to stop shoveling all that cash into your pockets like you've been doing instead of investing in infrastructure upgrades.
So, let's get this right... after all the expense of setting up the systems necessary to monitor, collate, and bill based on usage -- which is very much not free -- you find only "14%" are exceeding the cap. That pretty clearly shows the exercise is useless -- or at least, minimally, flawed. The reason given for doing this in the first place was to "promote network health" (or some other BS) -- i.e. reduce the traffic load. Yet, the pilot program shows almost everyone (86%) is not "abusing the network" by using "more than their share." However, you're going ahead with this farce in other areas. I've said it before, and I'll saying again... this has f*** all to do with "network health" but is, in actuality, a revenue generating scam. They now know they can get 14% of their customers to pay them more money. (or that's what they think... *I* will cancel my cablemodem -- cable tv, and anything else related to TWTC -- the instant they put a cap on it; It doesn't matter how much (or little) I use it.) Will they create cheaper, lower cap plans for the 86% that are "over paying"? Doubtful. That would cost them money.
We have been loyal Time Warner customers for about five years. For the past 18 months we have been victims of their incompetent roll out of their new cable navigation system, which for want of a better term, sucks. Now they want to put caps on the amount of data that we download over our internet connection, which has been very good until now.
We have made the decision to dump their cable product and go to the dreaded digital box, but we thought we were going to keep the Road Runner service. We'll be taking a look at DSL since we could still get our bill from one provider (phone and internet).
The consumer is at the mercy of these media giants because they operate with little or no oversight from regulators. Hmmm, that reminds me of something that happened recently...
Time Warner cant hack it. Bandwidth requirements will only increase as we progress. Time Warner cant provide the bandwidth? Then get out of the business and release those local monopolies you hold.
The internet is here to stay, and if you cant provide it and meet the demands of your users... LEAVE IT.
I live in Greensboro, and frankly, this just irks me to no end. I work in IT, I've negotiated high capacity circuit contracts with telecom carriers. This is just such an insane markup that its crazy. You could practically exceed their 5 GB cap just with BACKGROUND traffic on some of their larger broadcast subnets. (Think larger then a /24.)
I'm thinking I should just start a WISP. With their logic, with just a T1 line, I could make a crap load of money.
When I was in Japan, I was getting a 100mbps/40mbps plan for about ~$52 per month. Right before I left, they sent out notices to everyone saying they were going to start a new controversial bandwidth-capping plan -- starting from then on, you can upload no more than 500 gb per month, but there would be no download cap.
I might also add that I was only in a medium-sized city (pop. 400,000) and I was still getting these options.
I'll make this perfectly clear -- when American ISPs argue the need for bandwidth caps and talk about the top 1% of consumers, don't buy it -- they're fucking you up the arse, and they know it.
... before yet another worm sweeps the internet this time sending email with random sized attachments to people eating up capped bandwidth or some other scheme that could make average users feel the pain of the caps.
Before TW moves a few miles this way with their caps I'll find another company to go with, even if it means I have to pay more to keep the same level of service I get today.
Even though it probably will make no difference I will be sending them an email stating I will move to another provider if they cripple my service under caps.
Don't forget your state's Attorney General.
His life, tragically punctuated.
Bigpond counts uploads and downloads as the same thing, so that 25gb is "up and down", meaning that a 500mb file from Bittorrent usually costs you between 1gig and 2gig depending on your upload ratio.
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
It's all about video and money. If you drop your cable service to a minimum and start watching on the internet, you have just lost the cable company money, even if they are also your ISP. Worse, (for them), if you start paying Hulu or someone else to watch internet video, or if Hulu gets you to watch and generates ad revenue as a result, you have just shifted revenue from the cable company to Hulu (or whomever). Take the scenario to the extreme and the cable company loses all ad revenue and is only paid as an ISP. This is already starting to happen and they are scared out of their wits. It threatens their very existence. What's not clear to me is if tiered service is intended to kill internet video altogether or if they are capitulating and trying to monetize the stream in whatever way they can.
You are exactly right
:)
And I love your games. btw if I could make a request, what about a geeky shell "screen saver"? I stink at bash - but it can be run full screen. I would be willing to help anyway I can. myname@yahoo.com
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
This is basically Big Cable's answer to streaming video sites like Hulu and every Netflix user (or any other downloadable high-def movie or TV show providers online).
TW: "Sure! Go right ahead and cancel your Cable TV service! But guess what? Now for every movie or TV show you download passed 40GB, you will be paying us tons more $, which makes up for your not buying out TV service. If you don't use these services or download illegally enough to go over the cap, then you probably already have our Cable TV service or don't use them enough for us to care about you."
Sound reasoning by TW...but someone should really take them to court of this. Bandwidth caps in general are only going to hinder the progress of the internet. Who is going to buy internet streaming services when you have to pay 1) the service and 2) the cable company and 3) the cable company EVEN MORE when you exceed the limit? Seriously, the average high-def 30 minute movie file is around 1GB. 40 episodes per month of any show in a high-def format and you are over the limit. The average American watches WAY over 20 hours of TV, Movies, YouTube, and other crap in a month. You are over 40GB in no time, this is before factoring in online gaming, e-mail, general web surfing...
I for one will be switching to EarthLink or Frontier DSL. At least then I can continue to download and surf as little or as much as I want. For anyone saying this is a good idea because they only use 1-2GB a month, please realize that either are either behind the times or just not using the internet for what it is capable of nowadays. I use 10GB of transfer a month just to support myself with my side job doing web and multimedia content generation with FTP traffic alone. Seriously, TW needs to get out of the 90's. The Internet isn't all 1kB bulletin boards through Prodigy Classic anymore. Join us in the 21st Century please.
"I hope you know how very lucky you are to know me, because I am so incredibly incredible."
I really don't think TW's move to do capping stems from excessive traffic - I think they want to shut out Netflix, Apple movies, etc. Here in San Antonio, we have a few alternatives for ISP service, but I can only get AT&T and TW in my area - No Verizon, Earthlink, and I am not sure about ma and pa shops, or if there are any. TWs service to my house has beeen outstanding and I hate to switch, but I may have to out of principle. I hope someone sues the crap out of them - this seems like an anti-competitive practice to me.
Well, I'd much more prefer a known cap than something billed as "unlimited" (small print: we can chuck you off whenever we feel like it). Was searching around for a cheap web host recently for my website, and I purposely chose that any site that even mentioned the word "unlimited" would be crossed off my list. I'd rather be restricted but know what my restrictions are than be promised total freedom with a big foot linger overhead ready to stamp me out at any moment.
The caps given here however are totally unreasonable, and don't account for modern internet usage. Why not do 10gig / 25gig / 50gig / 100gig usage plans that all cost different amounts, but you pay for the usage plan that applys to you for that month. Only use 6 gig one month, you pay the lowest amount that month. Use 56gigs and you pay the highest amount that month.
Bandwidth costs money, I see nothing wrong with having to pay more for my usage than some granny checking their e-mail.
Hey. I'm saying sure it's always nice to have the all you can eat Internet plan but after all, let it be caps and not non neutral network.
Finland is the source of the best music, programmers and cell phones
you're missing a word somewhere at the bottom around 'infrastructure'.