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Time Warner Transfer Caps May Inspire Fair-Price Legislation
Time Warner's recently announced plan to expand their broadband transfer caps to new markets drew heavy criticism, which prompted their attempt to smooth things over with a ridiculously expensive "unlimited" plan. That wasn't enough for New York Representative Eric Massa, who now says he will draft legislation to "curb tiers, particularly in areas where a broadband provider owns a monopoly on service." Massa said, "Time Warner believes they can do this in Rochester, NY; Greensboro, NC; and Austin and San Antonio, Texas, and it's almost certainly just a matter of time before they attempt to overcharge all of their customers," adding, "I believe safeguards must be put in place when a business has a monopoly on a specific region."
Unlimited water and electricity for flat rates plus a pony.
The real solution is to get rid of government-enforced monopolies on utilities.
are in a similar position, with only one broadband provider? Here in Portola Valley, a stone's throw from the heart of Silicon Valley, we have ComCast as the sole broadband provider and the lack of competition shows in the prices. It's crazy - my neighbors and I would switch to DSL in a heartbeat if it were available. Wimax can't happen too soon!
These ridiculous caps are all about cable companies protecting their becoming-outdated business model. Right now, they charge for content (HBO, various extra channel packages, etc.). Customers getting high quality video (for some definitions of high quality) from places like Hulu is eventually going to eat up the cable monopoly cash cow that Time Warner Cable currently enjoys. So how do they stop it and protect their outdated business model? Caps. Insanely low transfer caps that all but eliminate high amounts of streaming video and that protect their cable company business.
If there's a reason the gov't should step in and put a stop to low transfer caps, it's this.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
Is it just me or do I find the complaint against Bandwidth Caps ridiculous?
I only seem to see people complaining about it in America, most of Europe (afaik) has gotten used to having bandwidth caps. For example in England I'm with the ISP wholesaler Entanet, you have your on-peak bandwidth (mon-fri 8:00am to midnight) and then off-peak is free to use as much as you want.
The reason it annoys me is that everyone is complaining about having their bandwidth shaped, and the cause for that is there is too much bandwidth being used (the companies obviously aren't going to increase their limits as shown by previous experience, and it's unrealistic to expect the ISPs to allow every single person their full bandwidth 24/7 anyway).
So if they're not going to expand their limits, the only solution is to reduce the amount of bandwidth people use, thus reducing how much people 'waste' it.
I just don't get why people are opposed to bandwidth shaping while the only way the ISPs are going to be happy solving this is to introduce bandwidth caps, and besides it's better having the bandwidth caps out in the open rather than having undefined 'unlimited' packages.
Since the majority of the USA have only one cable provider I would say the majority. Local governments have been granting monopolies for decades. As they upgraded to high speed internet. you get cable and random pockets of DSL. I day random as I can't DSL in my home though people within 2 miles of me can.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
People complain about providers advertising "unlimited" that they can't provide for the price. People complain when providers have unpublished caps. People complain when providers publish caps. People complain when providers offer an "unlimited" service for a price that supports it.
Bandwidth and infrastructure cost real money. Providing "unlimited" access means allocating more bandwidth for those customers; why should they not charge for that? I work at a relatively small ISP, and our Internet circuits cost us $50-75/meg (plus we have multiple paths for redundancy), and that doesn't include our infrastructure (routers/switches, UPS/generator, A/C, people, etc.). If you want a guaranteed 6 meg pipe, you shouldn't expect to get it for $99.
I understand that there are prices to data throughput, and that maximum throughput correlates with bandwidth. The service providers built themselves a losing battle, though. If they start selling tiered plans, then people will feel limited (even if they never went over 10GB/month before). People that are the heavy users (over 50 GB/month, say) have seen their access available at a certain price point for a long time will feel ripped off when it suddenly jumps to 3x what they have been paying. For instance, I pay $45 per month for a 10mb pipe. I probably do 20-30GB just with tv shows (streaming or downloaded), and my roommate does similar. In the new plan, I'd end up with a higher cost, even though until this point my usage has been acceptable (no warnings, etc). My point is that by subsidizing more expensive users with the money from people that use less, while providing "unlimited" service to people that don't use that much data throughput, they've set themselves up for disappointment in all of their markets.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Your Internet can feel like the Australian one.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
I don't see why this wasn't enacted many many years ago.
Comcast, for example, would buy all of a region's smaller cable companies and make them fly the Comcast banner. Then prices would jump 20-40% in the next year. Usually the buy-outs would have to be approved, and would be approved under the condition that Comcast provide similar service for similar prices.
Granted monopolies need to be policed like this. This isn't a case of other companies not wanting to bother with the cost and time to set up competition.
This is exactly what Time-Warner was banking on. You don't see cell phone companies deciding that unlimited text messaging is no longer unlimited, or that your 500 minutes isn't sustainable, so now you get 200 minutes. Mainly because cell phone companies have competition everywhere. If you don't like Sprint, try US Cellular or Verizon. Maybe even T-mobile. They all have their ups and downs, but more importantly, there are alternate choices. ISPs aren't always that way.
Hourly-fee dial-up ISPs went away pretty quickly once competitors started popping up. I think most broadband ISPs were starting out at the unlimited level to compete with dial-up ISPs, and now that the dial-up ISPs are no longer a threat, they want to reneg on the contracts they made us all sign. Not our fault your business model wasn't able to be supported, now honor our damn contracts.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
I see so many articles about ISPs hiking up their rates or beginning to use bandwidth caps but what I want to know is why?
Yes, a customer who downloads 300 GB a month is more expensive than someone who doesn't but that sort of customer behavior is something that all service businesses have to deal with. I work in the webserver management department of my company. For a flat monthly rate, we will fix, upgrade, secure, and do whatever other odd jobs you want to your server. Some customers make fifty (stupid) requests per month and take up tons of our time but they get billed the same amount as the customers who only make one or two requests. But at the end of the month, both customers are getting the same level of service. How did my company figure out how to reasonably deal with this sort of overuse and underuse behavior while large ISPs can't?
Another problem I have with raising rates and imposing limits is the lack of justification. The only thing I've ever heard is "It's those evil pirates! They're making your bills go up!" Yeah, right. There was a time when illegal media downloading was pretty much the only kind of media downloading that existed but now we have Netflix and iTunes and a whole slew of completely legitimate streaming sites. So let's say I do pay $150/month for unlimited bandwidth. Where is my $150 going? I'm sure there is an answer to this and I would be much more willing to pay it as long as it doesn't include "into the pocket of our CEO". Anyone have a link to an article (preferably written by an unbiased third party) that would explain this?
Does this rag smell like chloroform to you?
Meanwhile my DSL from the local provider in Rochester has plummeted from 4.4Mbit to 2.4Mbit due to line quality issues and I'm powerless to do anything about it. I don't want to be raped by TW and need to run a server so I'm stuck for now.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
I hope Mr. Massa does something with this, I literally have NO option here in the Rochester region (dial up is not an option, satellite is not an option, at least not an option i'll use). And im not paying 150+ a month for some of the slowest cable service ive used.
Im ok..
These Data Usage Caps are just a marketing tool instituted by the company to create a new Profit Center basically out of thin air since there is no actual cost difference for the amount of data that you transfer once the infrastructure has already been built and connected. Yes, there are costs associated to bandwidth when dealing with up-stream ISP connection contracts but in these cases these Data Usage Caps include all data, even local network data, or P2P data coming from neighboring peers on the same internal Time Warner network.
These caps are the equivalent of mobile phone companies charging you usage minutes for calling your voicemail box on their own network to check your message, even though you might have a phone plan with unlimited domestic calling or unlimited mobile-to-mobile calling that should cover in-network calls. (If you didn't know this, check your own phone bill minutes usage.)
These Data Usage Caps are just there to cut off the most demanding users, most of which are computer savvy hence their large usage, and to penalize them for their usage to force them to pay substantially more or to force them to terminate their service. Currently these users are probably very few but with the growth of streaming high definition video content becoming more common these caps will start to become bottleneck for average users in the upcoming days.
This is the equivalent of medical insurance companies putting a maximum yearly usage cap on benefits, penalizing those people who are most in need for insurance coverage for catastrophic medical events to force them to suffer from lack of funds for medical services or to force them to discontinue their insurance coverage since it stops providing any coverage. (If you didn't know this, check your own medical and dental insurance cap per year.)
These data usage caps are a symptom of today's social and economic lack of respect for the consumers by the companies who service them and they are the result from the lack of consumer wisdom or caring about the service that they are getting.
Any legislation that is passed short of banning data usage caps will legitimize this practice and the days of per-minute charges will be back in the form of per-megabyte charges. If this economy continues on the path that it is going and start really hurting people in the pocket book then maybe we'll see some real action to stop these kinds of anti-consumer practices, but if the economy doesn't slide down too far then this type of behavior by companies will stick and become "the norm".
you both probably get better and faster service for both TV and internet than I do with Embarq and shantel. We've got no cable option for internet and embarq's had a monopoly here since before it was Embarq, the wires are literally disentegrating and calling for support on anything will half the time get you hung up on because they have no need to do anything to keep you as a customer.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
In my city there are a few options for broadband, but every provider implemented very similar tiered schemes within the same week. So, sure, I can switch away from AT&T DSL, but the other providers will have the same caps.
They need to outlaw exclusive arrangements with municipalities.
More competition = lower prices and more options. IF it is real competition.
Include appropriate prohibitions against collusion, etc.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Not exactly a FPS but im sure you could somehow come up with a RainBow Unicorn that shoots whatever from its horn
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
"do you know anything about the internet infrastructure at all?"
I do and you have this quaint notion of the internet where Comcast buys T1's and DS3's and they each pay a telco charges.
Sonny boy, that vision of the internet faded about 10 years ago.
Peering between giants like comcast, verizon and others their size happens in data centers at speeds unimaginable. There is no "cost" of doing this peering (if you can use this term) other than running the fiber lines between racks.
Most of Comcast and Verizon core infrastructure is fiber as well, with Verizon having fiber to the premises. There is more bandwidth available than you and I can imagine, and while there is cost associated with adding it, it is a fraction of what you believe it costs.
Really, we're getting close to 2010. Time to drop the 1998 view of how the internet works.
lets see (pulling the numbers from /dev/null and /dev/urandom)
in a 1 gig block of data you have
200 megs of overhead
200 megs of retransmits due to the ISP [redacted]ing with the data stream
300 megs of ads and DRM [redacted]
100 megs of wasted data due to fancifed download links and redirect pages
200 megs of actual useable data
so if they want to do caps then they should be hands off of the data stream (no protocol blocking or shaping
unless they have an actual with pen signed QOS agreement AND THIS AGREEEMENT STANDS UNLESS RESIGNED)
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
n/t
I trust Time-Warner to give me a fair rate more than I trust a NY legislator!
Besides which, what's to stop Time-Warner from having the Fair-Price set to Their-Price? Legislators all have their price, because they can't Do Good Things if they lose their next election.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
CEO of time warner said that broadband costs are spiraling out of control.
Their SEC Statements for 2008 said YOY operating costs for their broadband service decreased 11%. It also netted them nearly 4 billion dollars in revenues.
In 2007 they also reported decreased operating costs and massive profits.
I'd love for that asshole to testify to congress the same thing, cause I'm sending my congressmen their 10K statements. Maybe a CEO going to jail for blatantly doing nearly the same shit bank CEO's and other officers have been doing will finally wake these people up.
http://stopthecap.com/2009/04/10/why-is-time-warner-saying-costs-increasing-to-consumers-but-decreasing-to-stockholders/
In Greensboro, at least, T-W points to AT&T as proof that they're not a monopoly.
I'd guess they say the same thing if any ISP was in business there.
What it is, though, is gouging.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
What a great idea! Those have such a fantastic historical track record I can't believe nobody though of it before! WTG Congress!
The companies are making money from being an ISP but being a large company they invest large amounts of money finding ways to charge more for what they already sell. Their two major obstacles to raising their prices are losing customers to the competition and being regulated because of customer outrage. The customer migration problem is solved both by the average customer's ignorance of what they're being charged for and by eventually having every major company switch to this very profitable pricing model. The legislative part of the problem is solved by using the issues surrounding bandwidth usage (torrents being a major one) to cloud the issues. The major issue being that the prices they're about to start charging, especially in the higher tiers, are absurdly higher than they should be.
Unless I've missed something I think that's the bulk of why Time Warner's method of tiered pricing is unacceptable.
Why do you need to run a local server, accessible to the outside? If it's to make sure your data is always available, just back it up.
Get a cheap hosting plan (I pay about 80 bucks a year for an ungodly amount of bandwidth, 500 gigs of disk space, unlimited email accounts, the ability to install pretty much whatever I want, MySQL, PostreSQL, PHP). And I'll mention they do back ups as well.
Seriously, buy a plan from a host provider. Your life will be made so much easier not having to worry about the hardware and uptime.
http://www.topatoco.com/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=TO&Product_Code=HIJI-UNICORNPOOP&Category_Code=1-EVERYTHING
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
lobbied Congress with perks and "campaign contributions" to kill initiatives to install fiber optic cable as a community service/commodity, claiming "unfair" competition. The telcos promised they would complete buiding the fiber optic future in the 1990s, got tax breaks and rate relief to the tune of HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS, pocketed the cash and then promptly forgot their promise. I still have UNUSED fiber optic cable running through my yard from our canceled community project. As a result, I have to pay $72US for 10Mb/s bandwidth and TimeWarner and the other cable/Telecos are constantly trying to think up new ways to create artificial scarcity of bandwidth in order to charge more rent for an outdated wire pipe. These thieves have PROVEN in the past that they cannot be trusted and are too greedy to be given the opportunity to steal again.
It's time the people took back control of the Internet, complete the Fiber Optic (or better) technology and make it a service like electric, water and sewer, cheap and affordable to EVERY house.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
It is the same with mobile phone services - the telecoms must share their network with competitors, and allow them to put their services on the network. This means that if you're a customer of a "virtual phone company" you might use the bandwidth of "big telecom X" until some box in their network, from there it is the virtual phone company which controls your call.
In addition, all providers of internet, mobile phone services and landline phone services (including IP telephony) have to provide their pricing and coverage information to a government run web site, so that it is really simple to check if there is a better deal on the market.
Of course all the providers are endlessly complaining, but the effect is that the market works, you get lots of providers, low prices and lots of services to differentiate, even out in the really really remote areas.
With working competition you only see transfer caps on services where it makes some sense, like during the daytime for internet by 3g. (And I could get up to 50mbit/10mbit for $60 a month if bothered to switch it seems.. I hadn't checked the pricing site in a few months.)
Hmmm, perhaps shareholders should be filing complaint with the SEC for possible fraud if the CEO is saying two different things about costs.
The tiered price model is good for consumers in areas where there is competition to keep prices under control.
In areas where there is no competition, it makes perfect sense for government to step in and set the prices. Actually, the mere threat of government intervention may well be enough to get TW and Comcast to stop squashing all potential competitors flat (e.g. municipal broadband).
Really, I don't think there's even a need for new legislation, though. The existing anti-trust laws on the books should be perfectly adequate here, all we need is for the government to apply them. That said, I have no objection to new legislation if it will help clear the way.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I know of at least one city that bills small businesses a flat rate based on the type of business and the size of their water pipe. If you are an office building with a single 2" pipe coming in, you pay the same as all other office buildings with a single 2" pipe.
Where it's cheap, it's like forcing everyone to pay $39.99 for 3Mbps Internet no matter how much or how little they use it. Where it's expensive, it's like making them pay $149.99 no matter how much or how little they use it.
In some apartment complexes, electricity is included in the rent: Everyone pays the same amount whether they run their electric stove 24/7 and have their air conditioning cranked down to 65F in the summer or if they are on vacation for the whole month and left the AC set at 90F.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I pay 70$ can monthly for my internet connection, it is capped at 100 gb download and upload added together... there is a fee for going over the limit and there is a 80$/month cap to the fee, so it's a 150$ unlimited plan... the cheapest one in my region, hurray for dual monopoly!
This is a great idea: instead of allowing a bandwidth provider to charge more for a higher tier of service, government restricts everyone to the same tier, which makes it unprofitable for the provider to make available unlimited or high-limit pipes.
To all of you screaming about tiered pricing, let me give you a lesson from realityland, i.e., from someone who actually works in the industry: bandwidth costs money (somewhere on the order of $10/mbps/month for tier 2-3 providers) so if you intend to use lots of it you better be prepared to pay for it. That means if you want to max out your 30 mbps cable modem connection, you had better be prepared to pay at least $300/month just to cover the provider's costs.
[ home ]
If I was a shareholder I would be asking who came up with this abortion of an idea.
It is almost as if they went 'Hey I know lets find a way to drive a good portion of our customer base to our competitors. While we are at it we can look like douchebags who are trying to suck our customers wallets dry.'
As a shareholder I would be asking why are you lying to our customers (who btw know that you are). THEN turning around and telling me that YOY costs are going down. Either you are lying to our customers or me. Either of these groups will not be happy when they workout who is (probably not either group). I would also be asking why are they inviting government intervention?
It is almost a step by step guide in how to destroy value in a company.
For the 150 a month they are talking about I can get a pretty good business class line that has 0 caps and I can resell to my neighbors. With 10-15down and 1 up. So for the same money they are talking about I can get a better service. Why would they propose this in ANY way to me at all?
I can see in NO way will this end well for Time Warner. Other then them saying 'our tests didnt work out and we decided against it'. Even then every single customer that sees a similar service in the future will jump ship. We have long memories, and we are already not too fond of the cable company...
If I was a competitor to TW I would be jumping for JOY. A way to blast out a cheap ad campaign and probably rake in a HUGE number of customers at relatively low cost. I predict many mailers in the next 2-3 weeks from AT&T, ClearWire, and EarthLink.
They should also be careful. Their stock is about 27 a share right now. We as a captive audience could quite literally buy a LARGE chunk of the company for very low cost for all of us. Then vote them out. Or show up at the shareholders meeting and make a HUGE stink over it. You know this might not be such a bad idea. TW has been sucking more and more over the years. Perhaps a major change such as this is needed. We could flash mob TW!
Really, I'm just reminded of the RIAA. They claim that piracy (arr, those damn Somalis!) cost them one hojillion dollars per year, but in that same year report their most profitable year *ever*, including during the Great Depression. Sorry guys, it's either one way or the other.
It's just plain out and out greed and lies. Pretty simple really.
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
First they sell 'unlimited internet' for a "lowish" monthly fee like $30. Then they collect a bunch of subscriptions and don't funnel sufficient amount into R&D, so they then create the idea of 'scarcity', so they can implement 'caps' (pre-emptive strike against being able to sub to an "on-demand" download HD movie service" for more than 1 movie). Now they re-introduce the old unlimited at the new shiny price of $150.
Like cell service. Reasonably usable plans were available for $29-$39 dollars. Then it was $49, now it's closer to $59 or
$69 if you want, say 10 hours a month of unrestricted call-time.
Unlike computer services which used to be priced in 5-15$/minute of cpu time or hour of computer time that eventually fell to
too small to be metered. This was the effect of innovation, competition and progress.
Now, we see the opposite effect of little or no competition and low innovation and low progress -- the companies divide up
their current 'offerings' into smaller chunks to give smaller amounts for the same price while 'quintupling' the price for
the old service.
Sounds like a ~ 400% price increase for the same old service, or "500% inflation". Someone asked for items that have increased
by large amounts (much more than the published rate of 'inflation')...it's not all items at the same time, but a 5x jump for
unlimited computer download access might qualify as an example of excessive inflation -- either that or gouging... Why?
Because they can.
Free market capitalism becomes corrupt when a few people (or pseudopeople(Corps)) buy up the market. Seems like corruption is the natural consequence of capitalism. It's even being acknowledged that the pay-for-performance system in place for financial was one of the main factors leading to the systemic abuse, fraud and corruption that is slowly falling out as people's abuses are falling out of the woodwork as deleveraging and the Fed's mantra of "constant-inflation is good" mantra is running into problems.
It's unrealistic and a systemic abuse to constantly inflate the currency as the Fed has done and has stated as one of its guiding goals -- not keeping inflation 'in check', but always making sure there is some inflation around 2%/year. The idea of 'deflation', was so scary, recently, that the Federal Reserve "printed" hundreds of billions of dollars over last fall just to inject into the economy to stimulate inflation to counter the economy's contraction. Rather than allowing natural deflation to occur (as happened in the stock market to some extent), the dollar should have been allowed to contract by 3-4% as the economy
contracted. Instead, they print more paper, so each dollar becomes worth less (inflation) to counter the natural contraction.
When the economy rebounds, there will be so much money in the economy, we risk an unpredictable rebound. Instead of providing
stability, the Fed has its focus on constant low-level stimulation, regardless of economic conditions. Pretty stupid policy to leave in the hands of private enterprise.
I know you guys are scared to death of caps, but I just thought I'd take the time to point out a few reasons why they can be GOOD things, and not necessarily all bad. (I realise that it seems the US has been screwed by big telcos taking money from the govt and not investing it into infrastructure as it was intended, etc.)
[disclaimer: I work for a company that, for almost 10 years, has tried to provide Australian ISP subscribers with the content they want to have]
Here in Australia, we've had caps for a long, long time. The most common cap originally was 3 gigabytes - so imagine how lame it was for us. Of course this was pre-BitTorrent/YouTube/etc, so it wasn't as big a deal as that limit would be today.
Now, a common plan is 12GB (I say 'common' because while there are plenty of plans, the biggest ISP here, BigPond, has its 'default' plan around 12GB, or at least last time I checked - it's certainly what I'm typing this on at my parents place).
Because of these low data limits, there has been fierce competition between ISPs to provide "content" - mostly consisting of mirrors of popular stuff, such as files relating to gaming, open source, etc (more recently Creative Commons-licensed video like the Revision3.com stuff).
So anyway, some of the good things:
1) Many ISPs will maintain their own mirrors of popular content - meaning subscribers can get fast, local downloads (that typically don't count towards their monthly cap). Here in Australia we have a very high ratio of availability of Linux distributions vs # of customers, for example.
2) There's less congestion as users don't randomly leave their software connected and torrenting 24/7. This is good for people like me that prefer speed and responsiveness and don't want to have to worry about a heap of people torrenting last nights episode of Australian/American Idol chewing up all our links.
3) The above two cause lower congestion on our heavily-contested international links, helping keep costs lower overall for everyone (this is less of a big deal for the USA, but we're pretty far away from a lot of digital stuff people want).
4) Many ISPs will run their own local gaming services - even if its only a handful of game servers for popular games. This means fast pings and unmetered traffic - and more variety and competition.
5) Many ISPs will run their own unique content services. BigPond, for example, has a music channel (www.bigpondmusic.com), which offers discounts to subscribers. Internode, another ISP, provides free access to commerical USEnet services. iiNet provide Premier League video streams. All sorts of cool options.
Of course, all these are almost utterly dependent on network neutrality, which has (thus far) been maintained perfectly.
I obviously have a fairly biased perspective because of my involvement in the industry as a data-peddler, but I don't think capped plans are bad. The vast majority of people aren't going to notice.
I would say though that if they're going to /force/ all users to act like 'average' users in terms of bandwidth, there should be a general reduction in price across the board to match the savings they're going to make. Dropping the price for those users that are happy to stay on low plans and leaving it the same for those users that want to have a much higher cap would seem to be much fairer. However, given how big telcos operate, I'd say everyone is just likely to get screwed, and as I understand it many places in the US have a monopoly-type situation on broadband availability - so good luck :)
After hearing of these tests. I called my internet provider (TWC), and asked if they would cap my city. They said not yet. I switched to another provider anyway, just out of principal.
http://www.cox.com/policy/limitations.asp
No outrage over COX caps?
Free market capitalism becomes corrupt when a few people (or pseudopeople(Corps)) buy up the market.
That is not a freemarket. A freemarket is a "free market". If I wanted to and had the money in a free market I could have cable or fiber optics lain down to provide any and all services it could handle. But there is no free market. Instead the telecos and cablecos try to block competition by blocking access. The radio and TV broadcasters do the same with the airwaves.
Seems like corruption is the natural consequence of capitalism.
Corruption doesn't apply to capitalism any more than it applies to communism and socialism. Anything and everything, including churches, mosques, and temples are susceptible to corruption.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Capacity is only unlimited if income is unlimited. Even in a monopoly people will only pay so much, so there's a limited income to expand the network - which puts hard physical limits on capacity, and to make any money at all the network has to be contended.
Thing is is here in the USA cablecos and telcos received almost $200 billion to buildout broadband but they did not. All they did was use the money to pad their bottom lines. They also battle attempts by others build out broadband. Some articles and posts on /. have been about this, whither it's telecos trying to block muni wifi or cablecos trying to block cities from installing cable. One example is A Broadband Utopia. Commercial broadband businesses tried to stop it but were unsuccessful. They were successful though having the Utah state government enact a law that requires it to be open, which was planned from the beginning. Because of the network Comcast was forced to offer a $90 bundle.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
everyone. For the heavy users, they will know that they won't be kicked off or silently capped since they will be explicitly paying for their heavy usage.
True however many broadband provider sold unlimited plans. Of course the contracts should be read, for instance mine said speed was not guarantied but it didn't say anything about throughput. Legally the only way to limit my throughput is to reduce speed. I'm one of the lucky few though, I have cable access but can switch to DSL.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
One of the reasons for enforced monopolies is that for an infrastructure service that is considered "crucial", like electricity, phone and water
That infrastructure has already been built and paid for though. Because it been paid for keeping the monopoly is nothing more than greed.
Oh, and that infrastructure was paid for with taxpayer dollars.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
You aren't thinking evil enough.
What if I, as an uncapped user, wants to bump someone offline? All it'd take is to push a few gigs at them.
Do you think TW is smart enough to only count requested packets?
perhaps you haven't heard but most of the western world has HUGE subsidies for farmers
While farm subsidies are high not all of the money makes it to the farmers. I don't particularly like farm subsidies but it would be better if the money was given directly to the farmers instead of to huge agribusinesses like Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and Cargill. Giving the money to farmers would be more efficient than giving it to ADM and Cargill. I don't know how farm subsidies work in Australia, Canada, the EU, or Japan, all of which give large subsidies for agriculture produce.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I think the cable and phone companies are doing the right thing by instituting volume-based pricing; bandwidth isn't unlimited or free, and it needs to be accounted for like electricity, gas, water, or heat.
At the same time, the actual prices are way too high, and that's why these companies need to be regulated and public utility commissions need to get active. I'd guess that 100G/month should probably be somewhere around $30.
The only exception I can think of is unless the cap is so ridiculously high that it doesn't matter to just about everyone, such as the restaurant imposing a caveat saying maximum 15 plates of food when most people can't eat more than 3.
I used to do something like that. Two restaurants I used to go to had Unlimited Buffets and I'd stay there for more than an hour or two, I may stay for 4 or 5.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I have a redundant 100 MB/s fiber link in Chicago that I pay $3000.00 a month for. Conceptually, I can achieve a data transfer throuput of 259 TB per month. If I use TW's new business model by selling data throughput at $1.00 per GB, I could realize a net profit of only $262,216.00 per month. I better think of raising that fee to $1.25 per GB (I may need the extra $66,304.00/month to pay the perception management team and lawyers when I am done). Go figure, I didn't even get any of the free massive government "Internet Infrastructure Support" cash a few years back like TW did (1.22 B). No wonder they are farther along in thier "Rape the general consumer" business model than I am! On the other hand, I guess I need to branchout... I hear there is someone in DC handing out cash again....
Basically each customer has an exclusive connection to the central office
True, but FYI DSL is an exclusive connection but cable, which is what Time Warner offers, is a shared connection.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Time Warner completed it's "spin-off" of Time Warner Cable in mid March. Couple that with what Time Warner Inc. execs are saying about "TV Everywhere". With that in mind as well as the rise of streaming video services such as Netflix it is hard to not see these ridiculous bandwidth caps as an attempt to hang on to their current Cable TV business model. Especially since they are charging about the same for a full TV, Phone, and Internet package now (almost $140 a month after taxes) as they will charge for an Internet only connection with a 175 Gig cap (100 cap for $75 and $75 more gigs over that...). I live in Austin and honestly I am looking at AT&T (who only offers a 3 Mb downstream in my area) as a viable option. At least they are talking about caps of 150 GB a month... and that speed is only a a third of what I usually get from TWC. On the up side at least 2 mayoral candidates here have issued statements against the caps. While that is encouraging I am not sure if it will still be an issue after the election but it is nice to live in a city where this issue gets noticed by the politicians. The thing about this though that really gets to me is that it isn't a consumption model. After all one of the main points is that there will be NO rollover of unused bandwidth. To return to the over used analogy of a restaurant for the consumption model. If I pay you for a plate and don't finish it... give me a doggy bag! I understand if it is a buffet and I don't get one, but to have someone pay for a plate of food and then snatch the plate away after half an hour regardless of whether or not they are finished... that's just cruel! Now, can we all agree to NOT use the restaurant analogy again?
Sure that web-site has content.. But so does a garbage can!
What we really need to do is have the following price caps on inlimited internet access in areas where there is no competing service. (by no competing service, I mean no competitor for the same type of service).
Cable Internet $29.95
DSL internet $19.95
Dial-up internet $9.95
No limits, no caps, no extra charges (except taxes required by federal and state governments)
And, we need to encourage local companies and towns to build/operate their own ISP services.
In far too many markets, large companies like Mediacom, Comcast, and Time Warner have a monopoly, and have managed by a variety of means to suppressed all competition so that they can continue with their extreme price gouging of customers.
Easy way to keep the telco/cable companies in line would be to limit what is basically predatory pricing aimed at low competition areas. Force them to offer the same pricing/packages in a state or region. If they want to 'test' tiered pricing in Rochester fine. But then they have to 'test' it in NYC, Buffalo, and Syracuse at the same time. The bloodbath they would take in areas with true competiotion would quickly put an end to this 'test'.
Wiered, in Germany, as well as most of the world, you can get 16 MBit DSL lines for about $40 a month unlimited, plus unlimited national calls (2 ISDN channels). And the company _still_ works very profitable. The discount providers offer ot for about $20.
I pay $51.47 ($CDN) for 7.5Mbps connection and 60GB transfer cap (upload + download). What is your current connection & price?
First of all Fatality is not considered broadband, mainly due to its upload speeds, and its latency causes havoc with most speed sensitive applications such as gaming. Secondly DSL is not available in a large portion of rural areas that TWC services in some of these states. Remember this company is not just doing this in your own town. As for price, just look at the rest of the world, or look at the evidence that has been provided in this thread.. The cost to maintain the network has decreased year over year, not increased, even with the consumption increasing year over year.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
I'm a TWC subscriber. I have their 10 Mbps service for 29.95/months. Notice, that that is not an unlimited service, never has been, never will be. But, TWC *calls* it an unlimited service. It is limited to 10 Mbps.
TWC wants to start charging me $1 per GB transferred. Ok, that is another usage limit on top of the one they already have in place, and it is stated in different terms so it is hard to compare to my old limit. (OBTW, they want to keep the old limit in place two. I do not get that, but they now want to limit my rate of consumption and my total consumption. Why not just one or the other? Limiting the same thing two different ways makes no sense.)
Ok, so where did I get 10968% increase in price? Well, under my current usage cap I get 10 Mbps 24 hours/day all day every day. How many GBs of transfer am I limited to now? Well, I only figured it out for the downstream side. So, it is really worse than what I figured out.
An average month is 365/12 days long so my current limit is:
((365/12) * 24 * 60 * 60 * 10,000,000) / 8,000,000,000 = 3,285 GB downloaded/month.
First I computed the number of seconds in an average month, then I multiplied by the number of bits per second I get and then I divided by the number of bits in a GB. I did not use binary GiB or Mib numbers because TWC doesn't seem to use those numbers either.
Now I compute my current price per GB from TWC and I get $0.00911720 that is 0.9 *CENTS* per GB. Not a bad price really. TWC now wants me to pay a $1 for what they currently charge $0.0091172 for. If I did the math right that is an increase in cost of 109.68 times as much per GB. Which IIRC (I always get in trouble with grade school math) 10968% times the current price.
Oddly enough, I understand the need to charge per GB of usage. I figure usage based billing would be reasonable if they drop the speed limit and set the rate per GB to what they charge for other data services. Take for example HBO. I pay $12.95/month for HBO which gives me access to 14 digital movie channels and unlimited streaming on demand movies. If you figure about 1.5 Mbps/channel and only look at the movie channels, not the on demand movies then I'm getting 21 Mbps from TWC for only $12.95. And, I believe about half of that goes to HBO.... It looks like TWC is perfectly happy with selling 21 Mbps for about $7. Thats roughly 6500 BG/month for around $7.
So where do they get off charging me $1 for something they are happy to sell for a $0.001 when they use it to deliver HBO? (Even if TWC kept all the money it makes from selling HBO the prices is still only $0.002.)
Wow, did you notice? The current price TWC charges me for transferring data *is*, within a reasonable error range, the same price they charge for sending HBO over the same lines. How odd is that? Now they want to charge me 109 times as much.
I understand the difference between wholesale and retail rates. I would be happy to pay by the GB if TWC dropped the speed cap and charged me a reasonable retail rate of say $0.005 (half a cent per GB) which is a 500% mark up over the wholesale rate charged for delivering HBO and over what they currently charge me.
Which means that if they went to straight usage based billing my monthly bill would drop from $29.95 to between $0.15 and $0.30. That is, I *should* be paying between 15 and 30 cents per month for my current usage.
Stonewolf
P.S.
Someone please check my math. I'm having trouble believing that even a bunch of your typical sociopathic corporate executives could try to raise rates that high in one pop. The normal way to do it is by boiling the frog like the oil companies do.
People complain about providers advertising "unlimited" that they can't provide for the price. People complain when providers have unpublished caps. People complain when providers publish caps. People complain when providers offer an "unlimited" service for a price that supports it.
Yeah, people complain about overpriced crap service no matter how they decide to dress it up, and complain when they charge more for less service. How bizarre!
Bandwidth and infrastructure cost real money.
And yet they're making money hand-over-fist, but not investing any of it into new infrastructure. So... who gives a fuck. Saying that as though it matters to this situation is a lie, one you believed apparently.
If that line you're paying for isn't coming with a 5-9s uptime guarantee and a ton of other commercial features from your upstream provider, you're getting raped too.
The enemies of Democracy are
Karoo, my ISP has recently introduced caps, but not in such a bad way, I was paying £30pm for "unlimited" BW before but now pay £17pm for 10GB +£1 per GB after that. The £30 unlimited plan is still there for those who want it so no-one is worse off really.
Talk about comparing grapes and gorillas...
The content you are bragging about caching in Australia mostly originates in the US and Europe. The US has huge amounts of landlines for hauling the load. My guess is that there is still more intercity dark fiber than lit fiber and there are still people laying fiber along rail lines. Not to mention that most ISPs already have huge caching servers so that content from Europe, Asia, and most of the US, is already cached.
I'm a TWC customer and they have a fiber bundle 4 inches across (mostly dark fiber) running 40 feet from my house. The TWC connection to my house is DOCSIS 2.0 and delivers 4 Gpbs in and 1.0 Gbps out to most rooms in my house.
I feel for you folks stuck out in the middle of the Pacific with limited access to the outside world. (My father will roll over in his grave if I every say anything bad about you folks he fought side by side with ANZAKs in the Pacific during WWII. I have nothing but respect for you folks.) But, if you have not been to the US you do not know what you are talking about. And, honestly, because of the distances between cities in the US things here are rather uncivilized compared to large parts of the EU.
To be blunt, you do not know what you are talking about.
Stonewolf
They are charging me .9 cents/BG and they are charging .1 cents/GB for transporting HBO to me. It looks like they all ready have about a factor of 10 markup built into my price, so my current price is already roughly 900% higher. That means I am already paying retail with a *huge* percentage markup. Not to mention that I only use about 2% of bandwidth I am paying for and HBO takes up all the bandwidth alloted to it.
Sorry about the mistake.
Stonewolf
Fill out the form to tell your representative to step in and demand an investigation of Time Warner Cable's unfair Internet penalty: https://secure.freepress.net/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=311
Capitalism abolishing force?! I would list you all the wars that were instigated by, and fought for profit of the military-industrial complex or some other capitalist entity
Yes capitalism and free markets. They are predicated on voluntary exchanges. If force is used there is neither capitalism nor a free market. What you describe is fascism, mercantilism, or something else.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
ead the abstract
True I linked to the abstract not the article itself, which I did read. I have that issue of the "Spectrum" and I saved the online article on my computer.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
those are not positive examples, you know...
No I don;t know, that's why I ASKED. If they are not examples please provide some.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Currently (in at least one market) "unlimited" usage is provided for $50 at 15Mbps down / 1Mpbs up. The new plan makes that same scenario impossible (they don't offer 15Mbps down). The closest you come to it is $150 for 10Mbps down / 1Mbps up @ $75/month + $75/month max overage charge.
That's a 300% rate increase in one go. I don't think people would be quite so upset if the increase were reasonable. Judging by their 2008 SEC Annual Report when considering the High-Speed Data costs and revenues, 300% isn't anywhere in the same zip code as "reasonable."
...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
Can you blame them for being afraid of deflation? The last time we had deflation with scare resources was the 1930's, a decade that no one wants to reproduce!
Also remember that unemployment went from about 10% to 23% (+/- a few percent, depending on your sources) in 1932 when Hoover follow the Mellon doctrine of laissez-faire capitalism. The result was deflation and massive unemployment.
And if you think massive unemployment, even for the short term, is "a necessary evil", need I remind you that revolts and wars have been started for less than that. Unemployment is a potent politically destabilizing force which can threaten both the established American plutocracy and normal law and order.
A TW sales rep called me yesterday asking if I wanted to upgrade to cable. I told her I was waiting until summer to see how this new tier thing pans out. She flat denied it and claimed she never heard of it. Despite all the facts I gave her, she didn't budge, but she did end the call pretty quickly.
Deflation hidden by a constant inflationary pressure from the fed is still Deflation -- and is likely to cause problems in other areas.
The same factors are not in place not as in the 1930's, especially since the current downturn is nowhere near the severity of the 1929 occurrence and is unlikely to hit those levels, as the stock market is giving hints of a recovery already. The recession ain't over, but right now, one of the 'noses of the dog', is pointing the right directly. Still have the rest of the body and the long tail to change direction as the wave of initial harm caused by the ....no, NOT the collapse of the sub-market (though that was in the chain)....
The final straw that broke the camel's back that nobody seems to want to acknowledge is the price of gasoline that had jumped to $5.00/gallon in many places. Now it's down to half that (plus or minus). If fuel costs had remained low, the people at the 'edge' (the sub-prime market) wouldn't have been defaulting in large numbers. Only a small percentage of sub-prime loans were "ballooning payment" loans made to people who could never in their wildest dreams afford the monthly cost of the non-teaser rate. That very small percentage was the fraud that everyone is focusing on.
The larger problem was the fact that no one could go anywhere without it costing twice as much and many people have to travel some distance (be it driving a few blocks to a small downtown, or a long 1-2 hour, one-way commute). People had to get to work - drive the kids to needed locations. Some travel couldn't be easily cut and people were, perhaps, not fast enough to adjust their driving habits to compensate for the doubling of gas cost. Such a high cost, for a some large minority, went far beyond eating up discretionary spending and forced massive defaulting. It wasn't until the trigger had been pulled, that gas prices began to tumble.
But if real deflation is "occurring" because demand falls, the prices -- in a free-market system, should be allowed to fall. Otherwise you don't have the ability to match demand by prices -- instead, you have those at the top where the fed is injecting it's money, getting 'rich' by getting the 'new' dollars -- and anyone who has any money or is paid at some 'fixed' rate (most salaried, fixed-income, and hourly workers), those at the bottom -- on short or long term 'fixed-incomes (which is why I include anyone paid a salary or wage at a fixed amount), will be screwed, until they and their "employers" or "sources of fixed income", catch-up and raise salaries, wages and fixed-income benefits - with minimum hourly wages being usually being one of the slowest things to catch up.
The constant inflation will always benefit those at the top of the pile -- the closer to the Fed, the more they will profit. By the time benefits percolate down to the "working class" (anyone working for a living), the money-printing / making class has already printed up a new batch.
That's the biggest drawback to constantly keeping inflation at a minimum of 2% target -- it's a built in bias toward the money-printers, banks, and lenders at the top.
I'd call that a corrupt system.