Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Time Warner Expanding Internet Transfer Caps To New Markets

Posted by Soulskill on from the sharing-the-love dept.

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.'"

1 of 394 comments (clear)

  1. Am I the only one OK with caps? by keithpreston · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    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!"