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Time Warner Shelves Plans For Tiered Pricing
The FNP writes "Time Warner has postponed their plans to test tiered data caps in Greensboro NC, Rochester NY, San Antonio TX, and Austin TX. This announcement comes shortly after the media started reporting on Eric Massa's opposition and protests planned for this Saturday outside of Time Warner's offices in Greensboro and Rochester." There's also a good piece at Ars on the fall of the current tiered-pricing plans.
You can have service that's crap for $X and service that's even crapper for a bit less from someone else.
Anybody who tries to screw over their customers, gets called on it, and then says that they are defering until customers can be "educated"(no doubt with an expression of injured innocence) has a one way trip to the special hell waiting for them.
It's exactly like normal hell; but your nose also itches.
They'll just find another way to screw you. Internet connectivity should be a regulated utility.
I was planning to call AT&T the moment they switched over their policy. You can't really fight millions of pissed off customers. Go interwebs!
Glad to see some *real* grassroots movements working.
The ISP's usual quote of "Its only 5% of our customers using 40% of traffic" argument flew in the face of the "So we're going to cap things so low everybody will hit it" response they kept trying to ram through.
If it's only 5%, set the cap just below where they are and only punish the *actual* problem children...or better yet, don't 'cap' but rate limit. Doesn't DirecTV's internet access do this already?
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
We just had an article on this literally the other day
I never knew how "good" Time Warner was until they sold out, in our area, to Comcast!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
It's unfair to sell and offer the service as "unlimited", which they did years ago when the idea of "unlimited" was big for dial-up companies, and then turn around and tell people they're going to limit them.
I would be more understanding of the situation of metered billing and usage if I was under the impression that they were doing all they could with the money they had and physically couldn't do anymore, but that's not the case here.
It's not a problem with any technology, it's not prohibitively expensive, it's greed and nothing else. And until they can prove to me and the rest of the people that it really isn't about greed then we aren't going to stand for them ripping us off.
It's just entertainment. It's not like your all complaining about your health care.
More likely the plans have been shelved for only long enough to let the public outcry subside and for some other thing to take hold so they can be quietly rolled out under a different name and with slightly different wording.
For all of those people who think it doesn't matter when you submit an e-mail to TWC on an issue such as this. Or post on the internet, I think it's quite clear that it does in fact matter. If you didn't send in an e-mail, perhaps next time you should.
On behalf of my neighbor who has an open WiFi access point and uses Time Warner, thank you TW!
Back in the mid 90's, Japanese telecoms decided that they would charge for a piece of each 'type' of phone action...one rate for voice, another for data, etc., while billing was based on quantity (metered.
This was while it was trivial to find service in North America that was flat rate, but still unique per type.
It didn't take much to find ways around the J billing hassles, such as dial-back for international LD. And it only took a few years for the J telcos to wake up to what they were not getting and alter their methods to at least keep them in the game.
Metered use is just an example of the free reign that domestic telcos have - they can dig into the client's pockets....so they will. Rather than build it so they will come, they cling to business models that are increasingly going out-of-date. And with no one to stop them, the domestic phone market will once again become a killing field of grand proportion, with the victim, as usual, being the consumer.
Wow... this actually increases my confidence in Time Warner. That they actually listened to public opinion.
Huh.. well cool.
Most people aren't thought about after they're gone. "I wonder where Rob got the plutonium" is better than most get.
...that the power of the internet has caused us to rise to defeat this proposal. As a TWC subscriber myself, I'm out of DSL range and would have been SCREWED if this happened. I'm paying enough already at almost $50/month for my broadband. TWC is very upset that they are becoming a utility and want to find a way to grow their $$ even while their traditional cable business is under pressure. I suspect this is not the end of ways they will try to feather their caps at our expense.
It's stories like this that make me glad to have Verizon FiOS. In the years we have had it, I can't remember if we have ever had a service outage, the speed is always outstanding, and I have yet to find even a hint that Verizon is going to cap, limit, throttle, or otherwise impair the service. If you ever get the chance, switch to FiOS right away.
Why don't they just charge a simple fixed rate? This way you only pay for what you use. They could also have a limit above which you will be charged extra. This is how all the other utilities work; why should internet access be any different?
While I'm happy this particular plan was shelved, I hope it's not the end of metered billing.
If you charge your customers based on how much service you are providing them plus a reasonable markup, it lets you keep prices down for those who use only a little, while still letting you give high-end users what they need without bankrupting yourself.
Personally, I'd love to pay a reasonable charge per GB with a reasonable monthly minimum. What's reasonable? In a monopoly or near-monopoly or for an essential or nearly-essential service such as basic telecommunications, it's something that leads to a positive net not outrageous profit from the ISP. In a true free market for non-essential goods, it's whatever the market will bear.
By the way, while low-end Internet is arguably an essential service, sucking down 10GB/day is not. However, in America, ISPs operate as a monopoly or near-monopoly, so they have a moral obligation to restrain their profits to something reasonable.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
They put a cap on my data im putting a cap in their ass! /* relax hoover, its a joke */
Maybe it should be COMCASTICIST!!
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
However, the wires should be owned by a regulated entity that doesn't play favorites with interconnection carriers and data providers.
If ACME Wire Company owned all the wires and local switching stations, and they invited all comers to install Internet, telephone, and cable switches in their switching centers, and they invited all data providers who could afford to do so to colocate at those centers, and they charged everyone - consumers, transport providers, and data providers - reasonable and presumably regulated rates, this would leave the telcos, cable companies, ISP providers, and data providers an opportunity to compete based on price, product, service, etc.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
It's unfair to sell and offer the service as "unlimited", which they did years ago when the idea of "unlimited" was big for dial-up companies, and then turn around and tell people they're going to limit them.
Can't we put this to rest? If they advertised their service as unlimited years ago, then they can't change it now? Things change.
In the NPR piece about this, one TW representative compared the current scheme to someone buying a salad and someone else buying an expensive lobster dinner, and the two of them splitting the cost 50-50. In other words, the heavy user is subsidized by the light user. But if this is their rationale, then making the heavy user pay for his/her fair share would mean that the light users would no longer have to subsidize the heavy users and that the light users should see lower prices.
But that was nowhere in TW's plan, which is why this all seemed disingenuous. I, for one, think it's fair for people who use more to pay more. But not when that is used as an excuse for price gouging. It seems much more likely that TW is just trying to protect their content delivery services from people getting movies digital competitors like Netflix's download service, which would been an abuse of market powers.
The customers raised a big stink, and the company listened?
The system actually works?!?!?
Student: Is it true that the foundation of the universe is paradox?
Master: Well, yes and no.
This provides TWC no insentive to update their hardware to support heavier traffic. /sigh
They are just shelving it, not putting it to sleep. We still need to convince them that that "educating" us is stupid. We need to put this issue to rest. Continue to send emails and sign petitions, and join a boycott.
Time Warner Petition/Boycott
I bet it was fun watching the Time Warner Customer Service dashboard/control panel over the past few days.
"Look, the cancellation rate is dipping....oh, no it isn't. Doh!"
Now, can we get Bell Canada to do the same?
Just as with nearly all other "unpopular ideas" they will find a way to sneak this in secretly or quietly. They WANT to do this and it doesn't matter to them that some people oppose it. They believe it will bring in more money and they are obliged to do it somehow...right? People can either keep watching for it or we can get with someone or some organization to finally get ISPs regulated as a utility.
I can't wait that long for them to land in that special hell. I want them to go there NOW!
hurrah?
/.
/. overlords, "/." should be replaced by /. icon every time it occurs in posts.
I'm also positive some will find a dark side to this, being
hey
You speak London? I speak London very best.
Why don't they just charge a simple fixed rate? This way you only pay for what you use. They could also have a limit above which you will be charged extra. This is how all the other utilities work; why should internet access be any different?
Many people are not against the idea of tiered pricing or even metered pricing although those who are against it are against it for good reason because it goes against the advertised "unlimited" usage. But it is the way that TWC has gone about setting the prices that is making people mad. Basically for many people their cost will go up because they would use more than the low tiers that TWC wanted to set. If the true problem is a top % of users hogging the bandwidth then they shouldn't be structuring the tiers so low to encompass more than that same % of users, whatever that % is. Because they haven't many people think that the reason for TWC rolling this out was to make people instead pay even more money to TWC for media content to their TV instead of getting it from someone else to their computer. The way the tiers were priced is bad enough but many people think there were ulterior motives as well. Besides, other utilities are indeed priced based on metered usage however those prices are very, very cheap so why are photons and electrons so expensive?
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Sure. Sounds great. Like my other utilities, let's go ahead and heavily regulate them and reduce profits (or deregulate them and let Time Warner's lines be a free-for-all). I'd be happy to pay about $0.07/GB. which is approximately what my hosting provider charges me for bandwidth. This was part of the problem. $5/GB is a tad high for me. $150/GB for what I currently get for $50 is ludicrous.
So sure, let them charge like utilities, and we'll regulate them like utilities. That will lead to massive price drops for consumers.
What I won't support is Time Warner's Consumption Priced Billing. They were planning on using their near monopoly to raise prices for the majority of their consumers, while touting the "price drops" for consumers using less than 1GB per month. What they charge for bandwidth is still way over market rate, and their SEC filings show that they're paying less for bandwidth and getting more income for consumers, so they have no reason to charge more.
This was also an anti-competitive move to stifle companies like Netflix, YouTube, and iTunes. A move they should still be investigated for.
In short, this is a consumer rebellion to keep from being price gouged, not a revolt against consumption billing per se.
Mod parent up. These pricing plans need to be looked at very closely to make sure that media companies aren't illegally tying their content to their monopolistic delivery channels, in an effort to squeeze out other content providers like Netflix.
I think its equally unfair for the price to jump when the customer exceeds an invisible threshold, requiring customers to constantly check -- using more bandwidth -- what their current usage is to make sure they don't go over. This is the problem with cell phones. The companies should be required to inform you when your paid-for minutes or text messages are used up and you will be forced to pay extra -- WHEN you make the phone call or BEFORE you send that next text message. The practice of waiting until the end of the billing cycle to inform the consumer is not consumer-friendly, and should be banned.
Fully agreed. I'm not paying $150 until my parents can pay only $1.50. Until then they can suck me.
Time warner, not my parents.
I'm torn on this one. Personally I think that metered bandwidth is the most equitable way charge customers, but I think that the way TWC went about it was a shameless money-grab.
We're already accustomed to consumption-based pricing. We see it all the time: electicity, water, gas, food, etc. Same should go for internet access. And in fact, metered bandwidth is the pricing model that many ISP's use for hosting companies and other ISP's.
But here's the catch, if TWC went to a per-GB model with the aim to keep their revenues the same as when they had per-month pricing, 95% of their customers would pay less. A LOT LESS.
But that's not what they were proposing. They wanted that 95% of customers' costs to stay the same, and have 5% of high-usage customers to pay more. Under that scenario, TWC would make TONS MORE MONEY. Essentially they wanted to have their cake and eat it too.
If somebody wants to do metered pricing right, here's what they gotta do. Send each of your customers a letter saying "based on your monthly usage, we predict that your bill would be $AMOUNT under our new pricing model". However, seeing as how the cable companies have totally pissed away consumer trust, I doubt anyone would believe them.
Or the companies could build their networks to support the increased load. It's greed and nothing less than greed.
Let's break down this salad dinner analogy a bit more.
The analogy REALLY works like this.
Two people walk into a restaurant and buy dinners. One buys a lobster dinner, and one buys the salad dinner. Though all the dinner prices are advertised at the same price, in this case, it's advertised at the price of the lobster dinner.
Eventually, everyone starts coming in to the restaurant and starts buying the lobster dinner. The owner of the restaurant realizes that the cost of feeding everyone the lobster dinner is too high because they assumed that very few people actually wanted lobster and most would stand for the salad. Eventually, they start running out of lobster to feed everyone and start telling people you all can't have your lobster dinner. We assumed that most people just wanted salad and offered lobster as a bonus, we didn't expect everyone to jump on to the bandwagon and start buying the best thing we offered.
Rather than find another supplier of lobster and expanding their business, rather than overhauling their operation realizing that people really don't care for salad as much and want the lobster--they start placing the blame on the people that eat lobster. They tell the people eating salad that the people eating lobster are keeping all of their dinner costs high, and that the business owner isn't to blame for the high prices but the people eating the lobster that they offered are.
Meanwhile, the owner is walking away complaining about money when he's got a few million bucks in his bank account ripping off the people buying salad by charging them for lobster, and telling the people eating lobster that they can't have as much of it and need to start eating salad.
If my entire analogy sounds completely absurd, because it does to me, then you get an idea of how absurd this entire fucking scheme is from these cable companies.
I completely agree.
"Yes" said the Time Warner representative, The $55 Lobster dinner was subsidized by the $5 Salad eater when they both equally split the bill at $30 each.
Now, under our new pricing plan, the Lobster diner will pay $95, their fair share after we total their usage and the Salad eater will continue to pay $30. Well actually they'll pay $35 after our proposed price increase. That seems fair to us. Why would any consumer have a problem when we level the playing field so everyone is treated equally? Currently only one consumer, the Salad diner, is getting screwed. With our new pricing plan both the Lobster diner and the Salad diner will be treated equally.
That makes sense to me.
I'll accept pay for what you use internet from a cable company as soon as I can pay for what I watch on Cable TV.
What the fuck do I need the Lifetime channel for?
I'd mod it up if I had any good karma.
to rephrase "It's like we sell all you can eat turbo lobster dinners and only expect vegetarians to show up."
A better analogy would be both diners getting the lobster dinner, and one of them leaving most of it uneaten.
TW's plan was like someone buying a salad, but they are only allowed to eat one bite. Someone else buying an expensive lobster dinner, but they are only allowed two bites. In order to finish dinner you are charged $1 for every bite over the limit.
I almost never e-mail government figures, mostly because I'm lazy.
I've emailed Congressman Massa twice on this issue and other people should as well. Show the guy some support, you know TWC has lobbyist money in the government.
well, if i had healthcare, and it sucked, i'd bitch about that too. as is, i don't, and this isn't a post about crappy healthcare.
How is metered bandwidth equitable? We are charged per unit for electricity, water, etc. because they are resources that get consumed. But if no one is using the Internet, those wires just sit there.
Bandwidth isn't a scarce resource except at peak hours -- and then, bandwidth caps don't do jack to solve the problem. Quality-of-service pricing would. Metered pricing with off-peak discounts would. But just plain metering would not.
-- 77IM
Student: Is it true that the foundation of the universe is paradox?
Master: Well, yes and no.
I see it the other way around. My broadband subscription for the past 8 years has subsidized the 19.99 plan that Grandma is getting now. If it wasn't for the uptake of broadband by heavy users then Grandma would still be paying $25 a month for AOL.
Not that the company believes anything about the plan was fundamentally misguided; as CEO Glenn Britt put it today, "There is a great deal of misunderstanding about our plans to roll out additional tests on consumption based billing."
Standing in front of the smashed shop window at 2:00 A.M. Glenn Britt, wearing a mask and holding a pry bar, exclaimed to police "It's all just a big mis-understanding"
Schumer announced his own opposition to the plan, then spoke with Britt about the "overwhelming opposition" to the caps. Citizens of Rochester, New York were furious about the caps about to be imposed on them, with Schumer's office describing the reaction as "outrage." The company relented.
Noticing that the half-dozen officers had drawn their weapons, Britt voluntarily dropped the pry bar and raised his hands in surrender.
Britt says that he eagerly awaits his opportunity to explain to the judge that it was his evil twin, he was home in bed sick, out of town, in a meeting, and that he was actually breaking in so he could stand guard so nobody would break in.
Congressman Eric Massa (D-NY): Pssst, Chuck.
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY): Yeah?
Congressman Eric Massa (D-NY): Sure been tough lately being a Democratic member of Congress.
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY): Tell me about it. Tea parties. Fox News.
Congressman Eric Massa (D-NY): I know a way you can get real popular.
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY): Go on...
Congressman Eric Massa (D-NY): People hate Congress and are afraid we're spending too much. I mean we're just rewarding our constituents after 8 long dry years but...
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY): Yeah, I know.
Congressman Eric Massa (D-NY): But there's someone even less popular than we are.
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY): Lawyers?
Congressman Eric Massa (D-NY): Call that one a tie. Think even worse.
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY): Uhhh...where's my teleprompter? Oh yeah, loaned it to Barrack. Wait, I got it!
Congressman Eric Massa (D-NY): Right, the cable television companies that we're supposed to be regulating to the benefit of the consumer.
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY): Ha ha ha ha ha...
Congressman Eric Massa (D-NY): Well Time-Warner just decided to screw over their customers even worse than before, and they're starting it in our own great state of New York.
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY): What are they doing?
Congressman Eric Massa (D-NY): Their costs are dropping and their profits are up.
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY): Profits are up? Aren't we taxing them enough yet?
Congressman Eric Massa (D-NY): Probably not, but that's not the point.
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY): But raising taxes on other people and spending the money on pork is about all I know how to do - except to blame Bush for everything, that is.
Congressman Eric Massa (D-NY): This is easy. I'm just a small member of the House and they're not listening to me, but you're the senior Senator from a powerful state. They can't ignore your voice.
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY): What exactly are they doing.
Congressman Eric Massa (D-NY): They imposing caps that will raise the average user's bill by at least 66% while calling them pigs for using the Internet connections they actually paid for.
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY): God Forbid! We can't have that - unless they need the money for more campaign contributions [wink][wink][nudge][nudge].
Congressman Eric Massa (D-NY): I think they need new private jets.
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY): So what do I need to do?
Congressman Eric Massa (D-NY): Tell them to cut it out, or else - and you'll be a hero to millions.
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY): That easy?
Congressman Eric Massa (D-NY): That easy!
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY): And if I don't, what's the downside?
Congressman Eric Massa (D-NY): They'll be protesting in the streets this weekend.
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY): We can't have any more of that. Except for NBC who is already in our pocket, I don't think we can shut down the rest of the news organizations a second time so soon. Not after the ratings Fox News got out of those tea parties!
Congressman Eric Massa (D-NY): Then we've got a deal? You'll remember who brought this to you?
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY): Of course, kid. The check's in the mail.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Obama likes to compare himself to the great Democratic presidents.
So do I.
In fact, I compare him most of all to the great LBJ, who only [blanked] when his lips were moving.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
"There's also a good piece at Ars on the fall of the current tiered-pricing plans. "
There's also a difference of opinion by those who actually work in the field
This is only a minor accomplishment! Time Warner is still metering customers in Beaumont, and AT&T is still metering customers in Beaumont and Reno.
Continue to take aggressive action by contacting your elected officials immediately.
TW has no interest in doing this. They're already cramming more and more HD channels into their service faster than they're upgrading infrastructure; as a result, HD channels are over-compressed and looking pretty crappy.
We had Insight (who now flaunts the "fastest ISP in the US!" label) for years, and then Comcast bought them out in Indiana. Now all of our cable channels signal quality has degraded to Comcast's usual fuzziness, and our bill has risen 4 times in 1 year, all the while Comcast has been bombarding us with "Bill will not change!" commercials.
One thing you're missing; you couldn't realistically build enough capacity to meet the "increased load".
In your analogy it would be like the people who show up to eat lobster also bring a bucket and take a few dozen home to feed their neighbors!
Face it, if the bandwidth fairy dropped a 100M full duplex internet connection on you tonight you'd likely be maxxing it out by tomorrow dinner.
I'm no lover of the cable companies or this ridiculous cap plan of theirs but saying that they can BUILD their way out of this problem is silly.
At this point it is clear that any increase in capacity will be matched by an increase in use and you'd have to increase capacity by almost 100 in order to get ahead of it. That's not financially possible even for TWC.
It costs a lot more to deliver bandwidth to homes than to a data center. The extra cost is due to the cost of constructing and maintaining the distribution network. The per connection cost needs to be excluded to make a serious rate comparison. Electrical wholesale rates are about 1/3 of retail rates, and the cost of the distribution network is the major part of the difference. Of course if the electric company was allowed to use a rational pricing policy and charge customers about thirty dollars a month whether they used any electricity or not, the differential (i.e. the difference in the marginal rate for each additional kilowatt hour) would go down.
What annoys me is the silliness of articles like the recent one at arsTechnica that assume that the cost of a connection with zero data transfer is actually zero. It is not. For a cable company it is probably twenty to thirty dollars a month, depending on the amortization schedule. All actual services are on top of that. So dividing the base charge by how many GB you get at that level gives you a number that has nothing to do with how much it costs the cable company to purchase that bandwidth wholesale. The cost for low transfer users is overwhelmingly the cost of the physical connection itself.
I would guess that when this settles down, the cost is likely to be equivalent to $30 a month plus $0.20/GB. The $30/month may be lower of course if you have regular cable television service in addition to cable internet service. If anyone gets a plan that costs less than $30/mo without being required to purchase cable television service in addition to that, they are probably being cross subsidized by other users.
The practical service limits are not numbers you can just pull out of thin air. It depends on the economics and technical capacity of the distribution network, how much it costs to expand that capacity, how long before the equipment is obsolete, and so on.
More to the point, the current cable television distribution network is hundreds if not thousands of times more efficient than ordinary internet television. The reason is because the cable television network delivers a fixed number of channels on a fixed time schedule to all customers. It doesn't matter how many people are watching the cost to deliver a channel remains the same.
The Internet is not like that because Internet multicast is non-existent and everyone wants to watch on their own schedule anyways. So if 10,000 people are watching LOST online, ABC generally has to deliver 10000 separate HD video feeds, which consumes a non-trivial amount of bandwidth. It is going to be a decade or more before everyone can economically watch television over their primary Internet connection. Current IPTV services generally do it over a local multicast network, which is hundreds of times more efficient, provided there is a fixed programming schedule and lots of people watching the same thing at the same time, etc.
For a moment there, I read that headline as:
Time Warner Plans Pricing For Tiered Shelves
Repton.
They say that only an experienced wizard can do the tengu shuffle.
They can't? Then why is Comcast promising 50+mbps by the end of the year in many metropolitan areas?
That's a poor analogy. In fact, it's a straw man. That is not what is going on here, You're saying business service with that analogy, but Comcast, Cox, TW, etc. run their commercial offerings on a separate network - at least according to the sales reps.
So, what you're saying is: shame on us if we believe you when you say your restaurant is all-you-can-eat?
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
All internet access should be metered - it's the only way the internet is going to work in its current form. Speed should be shaped when you go over your limit though, not charged. You use more, you pay more. It's how every other utility, product and service in the world works.
DOCSIS 3.0 does pretty much -precisely- that, at a per home passed cost of between 20 and 100 (depending on the source you read).
So, umm, yeah. In this case, it actually DOES work that way.
Amazing.
The treaty of Tripoli, Article 11, reads in part:
"As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion..."
This was unanimously approved by the Senate in 1797, I assume the Senate being composed of both liberals and conservatives, and signed by President John Adams--not exactly a paragon of liberal values.
Article 6 of the US Constitution reads in part: "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."
Let's see: treaties are law of the land, those words are in a treaty, and the Constitution says nothing to contradict it. I've no idea if that treaty is still legally in force, the parties it was made with no longer existing, but given the year of its adoption I'd have to say it adequately expresses the sentiments of the Founders.
Mottos aren't legally binding on anything. The one the original writer refers to so proudly wasn't adopted until 1957. It first appeared on US coins in the late 1800s. I'm not aware of any laws that say this is a Christian nation, and if the last 30 years of economics are any comment on our morals, well, I have a feeling that way too many people just don't get what that particular religion *tries* to teach.
I agree that all metro level cable and telecom distribution networks should be regulated monopolies, with open access required at reasonable rates where feasible. Competition in many areas is nonexistent (where service is available at all) due to cherry picking, often down to the level of individual cul-de-sacs.
A reasonable rate for a service that requires a network buildout, of course, includes sufficient price to cover the risk and cost to the distribution network provider of building out the network in the first place.
However, even then, the economics will not support everyone watching all their television on their own schedule over the internet for sometime to come. Hybrid multicast and DVR architectures are the only practical way to deliver IPTV to a large customer base.
Threatened protests are the least of the story. As soon as the economy picks up a bit, these douchebags will be back with their caps and artificially-complex pricing plans and their fuck-the-consumer mentality. Right now, they're scared that customers will just quit, or a lot of very bright people without a lot of spare cash will come up with a way to render them as obsolete as the record companies.
Then it will just be a case of seeing how much damage the old dinosaur will do before its brain finally figures out that it's dead, and tells the body to lie down and let new predators feed.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
You pay for water by volume and electricity by Watt-hour because when you use either of them, the utility has to treat/create and provide more. They have a bunch of static equipment and pipes/wires that are capable of providing a fixed maximum flow/power, but they also have real incremental costs for every unit consumed.
Bits aren't like that. The ISP buys a bunch of routers and switches and fiber capable of providing some amount of bandwidth, but if that bandwidth isn't capped then whether you use the pipe or not makes very little difference. The next bit costs the same amount to send regardless of whether or not you used the bit before. At the link level, bits are being sent back and forth regardless of whether or not any valid application data packets are contained therein. Peering arrangements are based on outbound traffic, so your downloads don't cost them anything that way. So outside of the tiny amount of extra electricity needed to process a packet which wouldn't even be worth charging for, the number of bits you consume has no effect on their costs.
In short, bandwidth costs lots of money, but once you have it, each bit of data costs virtually nothing. Therefore charging for bits makes no sense.
The only way in which your usage of the existing bandwidth costs them more money is if that bandwidth is saturated such that they cannot provide their customers with decent service, or accept new customers, and they have to buy more equipment/pipes etc. The only time that's going to come close to happening is during Internet Prime Time. Outside of that, and you can peg your bandwidth all you want and it's not going to saturate your ISP's link.
A person who downloads 2 TB of data a month, but does it all in the middle of the night, is much less likely to cause any problems than a person who downloads 20GB a month, but does it all at 8pm. It's the latter one who is going to force the ISP to go buy more equipment.
That's part of why this scheme was so transparent -- it didn't even attempt to address the peak usage issue.
You want equitable? Here's equitable: You pay for bandwidth, however you want, at a per-month rate. You can use your bandwidth as much as you want. However, during peak hours if the ISP is saturated they throttle everyone's connection speeds proportionally to their purchased bandwidth. Then, heavy users have an incentive to download off-peak for better download speeds, and light users who are under-utilizing their bandwidth don't even notice except that their ISP is no longer gagging.
Oh and if this happens too much, the ISP goes out and uses some of their profits to buy more equipment like any business trying to serve expanding customer needs. :P
But instead we get some BS about how it's the number of bits you download that is the problem. Which it is, of course, from their scheming perspective. If you download lots of large files, and those large files happen to be TV shows and movies, then you might not need your $60-100/mo cable TV. That is the "cost" that they're worried about wrt large downloaders.
The enemies of Democracy are
It's nice that DOCSIS 3.0 can scale this way, but tell me...does DOCSIS carry all the way through to the backbone? No?
Amazing. :)
You're too focused on the last mile. They MAY have 50mbs in places but I doubt any individual will get that in actual throughput. Most cable systems in the states can't deliver the 10mbs or so that they advertise NOW. What makes you think that just because the tube is bigger they'll be able to deliver more water? (Ahhhh, shades of Stevens!)
It's not a straw man argument. In my view it's a tragedy of the commons argument. People treat it as an unlimited resource when in fact it is a finite one.
There's nothing wrong with all you can eat but when the customers have demonstrably infinite appetites it's a losing proposition.
There's nothing wrong with pay per use if implemented *correctly*.
The overwhelming reaction is "this is great", but I don't think it is that simple. Look at the "Internet Tax". Again, now in California, the topic is surfacing and legislation is on the table. Mabye TWC just wanted to see the public's reaction on this one. Why would they release information about this only to quickly revert their intentions? Makes no sense if they were serious from jumpstreet.
From only 5% of their users? How does that work?
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
I wouldn't. Would you?
And if you would, then you must be rich, and I just can't seem to drum up much compassion for the rich being gouged.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
At this point it is clear that any increase in capacity will be matched by an increase in use...
Do you have the numbers to back up this claim?
Well, my current cable modem, theoretically, has a 3 mb/s download. That's roughly 7,500 GB per month of potential downloading that I could do. I pay $45 per month for this now.
Therefore, if you want me to sell me a 100 GB cap, I should get that for about $0.60. After we throw in additional administrative costs for metering and a healthy profit margin, lets round that up to a dollar a month. Give me 100 GB of internet for a dollar a month and I'll support this metered product model.
Maybe what we should do is start a "Psst, do you REALLY need that Internet connection?" campaign veiled as a frugality-during-the-recession thing for all of these assholes who apparently use 5 gig a month on their Internet plans.
Just start cold calling people.
Be all up in shawtys grill like,
"Sup boo, says here y'all only use like 5 gigs of data a month."
"Well I just sometimes like to e-mail my grandson."
"Do you think that the expense of an Internet connection for a responsible senior on a fixed income is justifiable during these troubled times? Go to the library yo."
And so on.
Then we can shut these fucking companies up already about how their average customer apparently uses the Internet to write "LOL cupcakes" on Twitter every 4 days, and that represents the average Internet user.
Increasingly, I think if you found these "average Internet users," they'd be the same people who have recalibrated the taste buds of people in this country so that you can't actually get *hot* as in *spicy* food anywhere. I just picture those assholes sitting there twittering "omg this salsa is hot 8P" while scarfing down corn chips with Old El Paso "MEDIUM" salsa.
I hate those assholes. They're ruining it for everyone.
I use Time Warner, but now that I know that they use non-kosher ingredients, I will remain a customer no longer.
Yes...if only someone had given the cable providers large sums of money back when this all started to upgrade their networks to handle larger loads, BEFORE the internet became the large bandwidth beast that its become.
If only....
Basic economics will tell you that for increased services, there must be an increased cost. Now Time Warner and every other "unlimited" ISP out there has royally screwed up by allowing unlimited in the first place. For all you people who are against traffic shaping and deep packet inspection, this is your chance to fend it off. At some point, increased usage will create increased cost. These companies should be able to make some concessions because they have made promises that they cannot keep. But people can't expect unlimited service for the same low price forever. Especially from a cable company. And if they do not invest more dollars in their Internet infrastructure, they'll have a bunch of pissed off customers in a few years anyways. Here is an opportunity to promote net neutrality by encouraging tiered bandwidth pricing. Because if you don't support tiered bandwidth pricing, they just go straight to traffic shaping and then fuck all you guys anyways. Get organized and do something reasonable before you protest. Or, if you're going to protest in this absurd manner, protest pricing in the first place. They should give you their service for free! They should make the cable guy be on time! The "government" (oh wait, that's fucking taxpayers!) should pay for everyone to have free Internet. Just become a Democrat and don't pay your damn taxes. Make the cable company give you free TV too! Make your government (taxpayers) pay for your food and house too (oh wait, they already will)! Make them (taxpayers) pay for your car (they do if you drive a GM or Chrysler). Or suck it up, and pay for the better service that you expect dammit!
Except, of course, the price point of the restaurant's dinner would be the salad, not the lobster. Try getting an asynchronous dedicated internet connection for the speed that Time Warner quotes you.
Most of it's still true, though.
Either you are a telco industry SHILL or a TROLL or have bought into their FUD or you are sadly misinformed.
I will assume the later and even if I am wrong, hopefully many, many others will read your post and than learn some more FACTS through this post.
First everyone reading this, realize that there is HOPE. There is hope for all of us. We all just have to be active and participate to help bring that HOPE alive. Please do not allow anonymous SHILLS and TROLLs continue to distract and divide us. They count on that division to keep their status quo alive.
They are FAILING miserably, thank goodness.
When a NEW INTERNET company comes into the US, with Fiber over the LAST MILE to your home and begins offering uncapped, unlimited monthly service to customers. Basically Japan-like-rates here in the US (ie. 100 MB / 100 MB or better yet 1 GB / 1 GB for LESS THAN $55.00 PER MONTH!) I like many of pissed off consumers will NEVER go back to our current telcos and ISPs, EVER. I will also educate all my friends, my family, my children to the anti-American corporate policies that have persisted since you all began offering service (or more correctly stated, your customer no service).
You can screw with us, AS YOU HAVE, AS YOU DO, AS YOU WILL, but many of us remember, we do not forget and we tell everyone we know so that you can NOT continue your FUD ways.
Ultimately we will have this. Either through government intervention (we vow to keep replacing politicians accepting telco money until we have enough that will actually represent us) or through a responsible NEW corporation. (one that has no ties to existing telcos) That corporation will be like the GOOGLE of telcos and will have 90% of the US Market, let the rest of you who have been screwing your neighbors (your customers) over for multiple decades fight over the 10% of SHILLS and fools left to you.
Basic economics will tell you that for increased services, there must be an increased cost.
The fact of the matter is you do not know your facts.
Is your Internet Throttled? Install DD-Wrt, OpenWRT or Tomato to learn the truth! Google: 1Gbps/1Gbps: 5 Communities
but here in Chicago, they charge way too much money for Internet.
it fucking rules.