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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."
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These ridiculous caps are all about cable companies protecting their becoming-outdated business model.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 So how do they stop it and protect their outdated business model?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.
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?
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".
If you try to keep the competition out of an area the the gov should cap your fees and that's not the same as getting unlimited amounts of a more scarce resource, like clean water, for one fee.
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."
Since the subscriber has no control over the amount of data sent to him from a site (ads, flash videos and music that play automatically, etc) it's hard to see how people would be willing to accept a pricing model that charged them for data they hadn't asked for and didn't want to receive.
No. That's just completely wrong.
Look at this way: If [insert favorite food vendor here] advertised filet mignon at $0.50/lb, even though I know there costs are higher, I better damn well be getting real filet mignon at $0.50/lb. Internet connectivity is no different.
Don't advertise unlimited if it's not unlimited. If you are advertising a 6 Mb pipe, it better be a 6 Mb pipe. That's that. 6 Mb, unlimited. Your costs are none of my business.
Long story short: don't write no check your ass can't cash.
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It's much more unlimited than water and if there's no competition then how can you honestly say that they're going to be the one and only good company and charge a fair price?
You'd have to be really slow to believe that.
Bandwidth and infrastructure does cost money.
But heres the reality. In the Greensboro area (where I live and know what goes on at the TWC datacenter) they charge approximately 100 times what it costs them to provide the bandwidth and infrastructure.
We complain because some of us who work in the industry know how much bullshit the prices are and more importantly we know for a fact that their traffic shaping and caps are not because its expensive, they are because they simple do not want to pay for the bandwidth they've sold.
The infrastructure they have is more than enough to support much more bandwidth with the switch to DOCSIS 3.0, which they are already doing.
The only limit is the pipes from them to the rest of the world.
When they drop services, they don't lower my price.
Why am I still paying the same price when they outsourced their news servers and put the entire north and south carolina region on a single link to giganews which was saturated during the TRIAL PERIOD, before the moved everyone on to it. It was never upgraded, users just get slower and slower news service, and they spend less and less, and I still pay the same thing.
Until you actually know what you're talking about, don't try to convience those of us with a clue about how much it costs to run a network. Some of us have done it and know its bullshit.
Their prices are hardly fair, take a look at their rate plans, do the math, compare them to what a normal business pays for unreliable service like the provide to the home, then get a clue.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Because cable companies have increased their rates at about twice that of inflation for years. My bill has gone from $40 dollars for a platinum package (all channels) 10 years ago to $150 for silver package and far less service than I had then. My internet speed has been increased by 2.5 Mb/sec in 10 years as technology advanced (when they switched to fiber a few years back).
In addition, these companies took millions of dollars in funding from the government to improve their infrastructure for just this very reason. To plan for future capacity. They did nothing with it other than spam additional channels in tiered packaged that no one wants and are now overselling internet bandwidth (according to them) even though I never see a slowdown and haven't for years, even before fiber.
On top of that, they have a monopoly in most areas where people who want broadband have no choice but to pay if they want to retain anything other than dial-up. They expect me to pay what I pay now for an unlimited plan, with cable and premium channels, just for the internet access I have now.
It's obvious they are doing this to prevent competition from sites like Hulu. With the internet, you really don't need cable tv. Given a good pipe and content providers offering up content directly, it severely compromises their business model. This technology should be dirt cheap these days as usually happens with wide adoption, yet the price for broadband keeps skyrocketing. There is no where near enough competition.
Cable companies have been gouging consumers for years with anti-competitive agreements with local municipalities that prevent other telecoms from entering the scene. If I had another option, I'd take it in a heartbeat. Perhaps this will put some regulation back on them until there is competition or at least an environment that fosters competition.
Why are you paying more?
Because you and others are willing to pay more for less. The market will continue to go in this direction until enough people drop service to make it unprofitable. They'll find the high point on the profit/effort graph and go with that price.
I don't think its a bad thing for companies to want to profit, but I DO think its a bad thing for them to offer less and charge more. This is the opposite of progress.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
EXACTLY!!!
1. Hellish TOS/AUP
2. Data Caps
3. Blocked Ports
4. Newsgroups
While Big Media consolidates, they now execute the cinching down of grassroots alternative communications.
It's TIME WARNER
it's COMCAST
it's AT&T
It's all about moving everyone to a "Certified Identity", Controlled Content, zero privacy, no constitution without big money, no choice for the middle class.
What are customers going to DUMP TW? no.. They HAVE NO CHOICE!
"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.
What the fuck part of 1.5MB down and 384k up don't people understand?
Voluntary cap? I didn't pay for that, I paid for 1.5MB down and 384k up
Port blocking? I didn't pay for that, I paid for 1.5MB down and 384k up
Traffic and Data Graphs? I didn't pay for that, I paid for 1.5MB down and 384k up
hmm?
24/7/365 1.5M Down / 384k Up
Heavy use? what the fuck are you talking about!? Every day is heavy use.
Every day is 1.5M Down / 384k up
The ONLY reason the data caps keep coming back is they are fucking us because they can and we won't fight back against this fucking fascism, because we are too scared to protest in the streets, so they are SILENCING OUR VOICES NOW....
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/
Exactly, look at wholesale bandwidth charges where there is fierce competition and see how price per GB has gone down in a very non-linear curve. Contrast that with home broadband which is generally controlled by a monopoly or a small oligopoly, price per GB has actually tripled (compare dialup 53Kbps @ $10/month in the 90's to TW's lowest tier @$30/month for the same amount of transfer).
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I would really love to see the telecoms pipe separated from the cable television. Force them to rent from the telecom companies while ensuring that the Telecom companies themselves couldn't get a monopoly on entire regions.
Better yet, have each city pay and build out the fiber network and treat it like a utility to the content providers. That would open up the industry to competition as they wouldn't have to own and/or build the pipes to deliver their content, it would regulate the cost of the pipe itself, and the taxpayer would eventually earn back the cost of building the network via the rental to the cable/internet providers. It would also remove a huge barrier to new competition entering the area as they won't have to build out their own fiber lines to compete.
Sounds like a pipe dream though...(ouch..bad pun)
Stop shilling for corporations. Clearly the unlimited broadband model has been extremely profitable.
Bears repeating. In bold.
If those are really the annual net gains then it boggles my mind why they wouldn't start upgrading and building out infrastructure and taking more tax writeoffs. They would simply have to pay for their own network, write off the costs, and reap the long-term benefits of their shiny new network. Hell, they might even reduce the average customer bill and still make more money by gaining more customers. I am missing something here-- is this a simplistic view, or are ISPs simply too greedy to bother investing in their own future?
What could possibly hurt the security of the American people more than giving our own government the ability to hide its
That would be a good argument except that we have examples from many areas around the world where much cheaper internet with much higher capacities are available.
Now sure- you could suggest that japan or korea are small. But so are new york and most other major metropolitan areas.
It is extremely clear that we are being ripped off big time.
It may go into city coffers as bribes/fees, or it may be going straight in the pocket of the back bone providers, or perhaps the monopolistic city ISP's.
But it is clear we are being ripped off because we have many counter examples of the same thing being done better, faster, AND cheaper all around the world.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
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?
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....
many phones have the ability to limit messages received, plus providers also have many options for adding blocks and such as well.
I don't see how that's even remotely helpful. I want to receive messages from people that I know or do business with. What I don't want are unsolicited advertisements being sent to me at my expense. If all the flyers and other junk mail in my mailbox were sent to me postage-due, I'd be pissed as well. Blocking all messages isn't a solution, and blocking one sender at a time won't work either. So yeah, it's a problem.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
That is a good point. And as long as they hold their monopolies, then this particular aspect needs to be regulated. That is, with respect to services that they offer over their lines, they have to behave like common carriers.
We've tried incentives like huge tax breaks to get them to modernize their networks to increase capacity, but they tend to just pocket most of that money and go right on raping their customers. I blame government corruption and incompetence for that. If you're gonna put the carrot out there, you'd damn well better have a stick too.
As long as they're allowed to have control over the last mile to homes and businesses, we're all gonna get screwed. That infrastructure should be a municipal asset where we can contract out maintenance and upgrades, and then allow any provider that wants to compete to have access to deliver service over that infrastructure. Right now we are pretty much stuck with them whining about how it's so expensive to provide service and increase capacity. That's bullshit when they've been given more than enough time and money to do so, in addition to the ability to charge duopoly-size fees already. I won't be crying for them.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
No resource is unlimited. That's clear. But if they advertise unlimited service they shouldn't be able to sneak behind the customer's backs and slip on limitations. That's fraud. It's not even bait and switch, because they don't make the change until after they make the sale. (Or rather the customer has no reasonable way of knowing about the switch until after they've paid their money and gone through the effort of setting up the system. It's just basic fraud.)
Their being a monopoly just makes things worse. It means there's no feasible alternative. So people don't consider their options closely, because they don't seem to have any.
Actually, I suspect this lack of choice is fostered by the government, as it means fewer companies they need to browbeat when they want to tap the lines...but this is without any evidence. Historically it's generally because the local governments didn't want to go the the trouble of laying their own infrastructure, so they made a "deal with the devil" and granted a monopoly to whoever would lay the lines. Somebody did, and that somebody got bought up by a larger company which got bought up by a larger company...until there were monopolies over very large areas of the country. (Actually, from the point of internet service, it turned into a duopoly, as frequently the phone company and the cable company would each supply fast internet connection. Duopolies aren't quite as good at price fixing as monopolies, but they come close. I'm not counting the minor providers, like the satellite systems, as they control less than 40% of the market.) So one doesn't need to presume malice in the way the system was developed--stupidity and shortsightedness are quite sufficient. Only in how it continues to be supported does the suspicion of malice become difficult to avoid.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I am definitely against capping the data transfer. I am among those who would be hit hardest, because I do almost all of my TV watching online.
I also do VPN and Remote Desktop, which sucks down huge amounts of bandwidth.
A data transfer cap is a huge step backwards for America. I generally favor less government intervention in businesses, but since the government has already handed out hundreds of billions to cable and phone companies to build infrastructure, and because cable companies are essentially monopolies in their service areas, I definitely think that some legislation is in order to protect the consumers.