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Time Warner Broadband Cap Trial Rescheduled In Texas
jcrousedotcom writes "Time Warner cable apparently has heard that folks aren't too happy with their plan to meter their unlimited connections. From the first paragraph of the article: 'Time Warner Cable's proposed trials of consumption-based billing were originally slated to begin in several markets this summer, where customers would be a part of a tiered pricing scheme. Pricing would have started at 1 GB per month for $15, and go up to 100 GB per month for $75, and include a per-gigabyte overage fee. The public's reaction was less than favorable, and the trials in Texas have been rescheduled.'"
Yeah, I could see how they'd get pissed.
I could see Time Warner trying to set this up with NEW customers, but, with existing ones...how can they change it in the middle of the game? I know they say in the TOS they can change some things, but, can they legally change the basic service agreement on what a person contracted with them to provide?!?!
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I, like anyone else, would love to have unlimited internet.
But, if this metered approach is going to work, there needs to be a way to provide a real time, accurate way to view how much of your allotted data has been used. Without this there will never be a fair way to do it.
Maybe they should ship everyone a mode with a digital meter right there on the front that starts to change colors the closer you get to your cap.
Even then, certain things, such as security updates, need a way to get passed through without detracting from your allotment.
"I don't have to think. I only have to do it. The results are always perfect, but that's old news." - Meat Puppets
You don't seriously think a company wants to lower the price charged to the majority of its users, do you?
AT&T owns most of the phone lines and has their own backbone connections, the cost of lighting up more fiber and even running more fiber along the existing right of ways they're using is minimal compared to the amount of money they're fleecing out of their customers. I get even worse service than it was back in the pacbell days, arguably they ought to have figured out how to give it to me cheaper by now, but it's ten bucks a month more. And for what? Crushed by the Death Star. They bought my fucking cellphone provider, too.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
What should actually happen is that they advertise the speed their infrastructure is capable of.
If Comcast has 100Mbps of total bandwidth available for the 100 customers on my node, then they should sell me a 1Mbps plan, even if it costs the same as my current "unlimited" 6Mbps plan, capped at 250GB. If I happen to get more than 1Mbps at times because my neighbors aren't using their bandwidth, then that's better for me, and for my ISP.
Convert FLACs to a portable format with FlacSquisher
At least that's what I get from Cox cable....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I'm one of the first to quit TW if they do such a thing...and probably I'll switch till nobody is offering unlimited bandwidth anymore... :(
Or you could have a set cap with a high speed. When you hit your cap, they limit your speed to some minimal number for email and web browsing. I've heard of that system before, I believe in Australia and/or New Zealand.
Of course, I'd rather they upgrade their network, but there are other options...
The confidence of ignorance will always overcome the indecision of knowledge.
e) Implement Quality-of-Service pricing. If the network really does get congested, you can pay extra to give your bits priority. If the network isn't congested, you pay the same as everyone else.
(This maintains net neutrality if all customers pay the same rate for high priority. When Time Warner Cable gives a higher rate to FoxNews.com than to CNN.com because they are partners with CNN, that would break neutrality.)
-- 77IM
Student: Is it true that the foundation of the universe is paradox?
Master: Well, yes and no.
It's clear that squeaking is doing some good. So lets squeak louder and harder. Personally, I don't use TWC (thank god), but if I don't say something now, it will be a matter of time before this is an "Accepted" practice.
All the evidence I've seen shows that d.) is entirely possible. Time Warner Cable has been making large profits already with the current system and their is no evidence that there is a bandwidth crunch. In fact all the evidence points to bandwidth caps having little or nothing to do with network management and everything to do with a cash grab. Best of all the COO of Time Warner Cable Lendell Hobbs agrees with me. "Mr. Hobbs tried to strike a balance, saying that while the company is concerned about the cost to maintain its broadband network, investors should not be worried. He said it was "absolutely not" true that Time Warner's profits were being squeezed by the cost of heavy broadband users. "If you are getting feedback that there is an immediate problem, nothing could be further from the truth," he said." http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/time-warner-cable-profits-on-broadband-are-great-and-will-grow-because-of-caps/
Well said.
Besides that, I don't see how throwing more money at them will magically clear up the problem. We already tried that[as you mentioned], yet here we are again. "Bury us in money, and everything will instantly be OMGZ!!! Ponies!"
I read my TOS with my ISP before I signed. There is no clause or restriction on usage of bandwidth/data amounts.
What limits there are involve not setting up a webserver, or connecting more than three computers to the net at a time.
The service I get now for $40 USD/month would jump to a minimum of $75 USD/month.
Sounds like a raw deal to me. I'm not with TW, but don't like the thought of this becoming an 'industry standard'.
FTFA:
[my emphasis]
Yet all of those services have joyously and lavishly been advertised and marketed by these very same ISP.'s. What did they expect? Was this not what they were aiming for by promoting them?
I'm not buying this load of BS.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
C. regulate them until they can't take a shit without permission since they have proven to abuse their monopoly.
+1
There is a reason that Sat and Cable still work. Multicast was rejected by the ISPs, and Unicast just plan sucks when dealing with video on a large scale. For example, video on unicast of a guy showing how to install Linux on a PS3 perfect. Video of the SuperBowl over unicast = FAIL.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
That just made me mad that I used up my last mod point a few minutes ago, 'cuz that def deserves an 'informative' or 'insightful'. Every utility does oversubscribe, even cell companies (I can't be the only person to get an "all circuits are busy" message around 5:20PM).
I think there are a few differences though. First, if a significant amount of people start using additional power, my limited understanding is that it is possible to ramp up power production to meet a peak demand. Summer electric usage > winter electric usage, and I don't believe for a second that my local power plant is needlessly burning oil. Bandwidth is more difficult to 'generate', as can be seen on any site that gets /.ed.
What's also a different case with bandwidth is that it's a whole lot easier for people to sustain a very high usage. Leave limewire on in one room while you're Netflixing in another and set a third computer to Windows Update, the fourth uploading photos to Photobucket, and an Xbox playing online. situations like this aren't horrifically uncommon, and can last for several hours. sure, people can use alot of power, but I think that it affects the neighbors on a more limited scale than bandwidth does (unless you're blasting the stereo or something similar).
It's the same way the cell phone companies do it: you have to guess how many minutes you're going to use ahead of time, then get shorted for what you don't use and pay huge overages for when you exceed you're initial guess. Let's get back to the electric utility model where you are charged for exactly what you use, and if anything, you get lower off-peak rates.
But there's one major problem with these metaphors: With the phone, and to a somewhat lesser extent with electricity, consumers can measure their usage. I can use my watch to keep track of how much time I spend on the phone (and try to get the rest of the family to do the same; yeah, right ;-). I can buy meters that measure the electrical consumption of various gadgets, or the whole house if I like.
But with the Internet, most consumers have no way at all of measuring their byte count. The ISP can make up any numbers they like, and most people have no way at all of knowing whether the numbers are accurate, or if the ISP is just making them up.
Now consider the major ongoing scandal in the US about major corporations playing fast and loose with just about everything, and the constant reminders that corporations are in business to make a profit. Why would any mere "consumer" trust them at all? Their business is to extract money from us, by any legal means, and they seem proud of that fact. Anyone who disagrees with that purpose is a Socialist or Communist, y'know. So why would we be happy with a charging mechanism that lets them make up numbers, and charge us proportionally to those numbers?
It doesn't seem likely that American consumers are going to trust their ISP (or banks or employers or realtors or used car dealers or ...) any time soon. So the only stable Internet charging scheme has to be one that's based on numbers that the customers can verify independently. This basically means wall-clock time, since only a tiny population of geeks has a chance of measuring anything else that's "digital" (a concept that is a total mystery to the other 99% of the population).
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
New Marketing Idea. Do what ATT does for cell phones
Rollover MB's
Sign up for a plan for X MB per month. Download capacity you don't use goes into the bank. Overages are charged at a set rate.
Over the cap for two months in a row and get bumped up a level. Have too many MB's in the bank and get dropped automatically down a level.
Fair and Simple.
You could get even more complex if you desire, where MB's consumed vary with network load. Downloading a torrent during the busiest time of day counts double towards your cap, Download at 3:00AM and it counts half.
I just wish these companies would man up and and have fair pricing. And for all of the people who signed up for Unlimited plans, suck it up and deal with the change or go elsewhere. Every other industry (credit cards, insurance, medical care)can periodically change the service agreement. Besides, as COMCAST I'd hope the heavy users got mad and went elsewhere.
Truth: If it's not one thing, it's another
There is a conflict of interest - TWC has a real issue with low vs high capacity users, and fairness to users is the other side. They also have plant considerations planning for DOCSIS 3.0 and the associated equipment. First, the proposed plan is egregious in setting arbitrary caps. There should be a universal cap (rate differentials remain based on speed bandwidth, not consumption) based on the highest 2-5% of all users. Say the cap would be 90% of the highest 2% of users. If the highest 2% consumed 100 GB on the average over a 3 month period, the cap would be 90 GB with a standard $0.50 per GB above. The cap should be reset every 3 months to allow for new high use services to develop. The cap should be raised arbitrarily by 20% every 6 months regardless of heaviest users. Secondly , Congress of the FCC should ensure that this is not simply a way around proposed network neutrality rules. TWC could (and probably would) exempt their preferred services from the bandwidth cap creating a tremendous preference, especially for streaming music, video and images. A new form of the old walled garden. And finally, the cap set must allow for video streaming video to traverse the TWC network in greater and greater volume. To use its monopolistic broadband position in most of its markets to restrict user chosen video is about as truly non-competitive as anything Microsoft ever pulled. A cap is a bad idea (like charging for local voice calls by the minute) that completely changes the Internet from a world wide network open to all users and uses to a private TWC owned system.
So, is the point here that infrastructure costs are far cheaper in the United States because average population per unit of surface area is much less, thus imposing far lighter demand on infrastructure (since cable throughput will reach its saturation point per node much quicker with far more people per unit of surface area)?
Why are our urban areas so far behind Japan and South Korea's urban areas?
Because we have a fucked up hybrid system that touts the advantages of the "free market" while actually granting monopolies that lock out competition (franchise agreements) and which are backed with the full force of Government?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Time Warner pays pennies per gigabyte upstream for termination. The prices they are looking to charge are orders of magnitude out of line with their costs. This is about protecting their TV and pay-per-view business, plain and simple.
Time Warner is a Tier-1, and I'd venture to say that the vast majority of their traffic goes over FREE peering connections to the other Tier-1s. Their primary delivery costs likely involve admin/maintenance man-hours and replacing broken/outdated networking gear, so even "pennies per gigabyte" is probably a vast overestimate. I'd say more like "pennies per petabyte"
Nothing worthwhile ever happens before noon
Actually, it's more like 1000:1. The issue isn't so much the transit points but the actual traffic on each QAM per node. Each channel supports ~40mbps (42.88) With 5M/384k there's enough download space for 8 people at full speed. It falls off gradually as more people are added, but everyone gets a pretty even cut of that 40M. As they ramp the speeds higher and higher, that means fewer and fewer ever get to see it. But it gets even worse. The higher your download rate, the higher your upload rate has to be to keep up with it. TCP requires ACKs of the data received or the transmitting stops. @5mbps, that's roughly 425 full size packets per second. With a 64k window, the remote side can transmit ~40 packets before stopping completely. So, in a perfect world -- and the internet is not such a place -- there must be at least 10 ACKs per second to keep the spice flowing; that's about 5kbps in ACKs only. Back in reality, it's about 5-10x that (ACK every 5 packets or so) or about 40kbps, minimum. (factor in queing and other traffic and that 40k starts looking more like 80k.) If your upstream path is saturated (or nearing it), your downstream throughput will start dropping substantially, because the stream of ACKs aren't getting through at the necessary rate.
Now here's the rub... they like to push download speed, but they don't pump the upload speeds much. Generally speaking, they are keeping the down:up at a functional point. However, the upstream capacity of the system is far less than the downstream -- 10mbps (1.0/1.1) or 30mbps (2.0). Unlike the equalizing effect with a staturated downstream channel -- due to queuing at the headend, when the upstream channel is full, everybody suffers. There's nothing the network can do about 75 cablemodems starved for airtime. 8M blistering downloads and 1K ssh sessions all suddenly slow to a crawl measured in single digit packets per second. It ain't pretty. (It's not 10base-2 bad, but it's something to avoid.)
Remember those Slashdot articles a few years ago about Google buying up dark fiber?
And more recently, building massive data centers near power stations?
I wonder if they might be waiting for something like this to open up their ISP division and bury Comcast and TWC by offering unmetered service?
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I'm a Time Warner San Antonio Roadrunner subscriber and I got a very strange letter from them yesterday.... They want me to trade in my existing modem (which they own anyway) on a new one so I can use "PowerBoost" for free. Apparently, PowerBoost gives you more speed (if it is available) for the first 10MB of a download, then goes back to your normal speed. Of course, nothing is for free, so I suspect they need me to have this new modem in order to switch to the tiered bandwidth system. So, no thanks, I'll keep my existing one for now. Of course, they can make me trade it out if they want to by cutting it off, but why should I take their bait and make it easier for them to screw me? BTW, I understand that Earthlink (piggybacking on TW) won't have bandwidth caps, so I'll switch to them if I have to. Don't have TV cable anymore, so to hell with TW. Unfortunately, the cable is my only option until AT&T activates this fiber they buried in front of my house a YEAR ago!!!