Time Warner Pulls Plug On Metered Billing Tests

fudreporter is one of many who writes to tell us that Time Warner is not planning to continue their tiered consumption tests at this time. The company is not completely admitting defeat, stating that they "may return to the idea in the future," but for now the test has been shut down. "The plan would have established several tiers based on how much consumers use the Internet. Time Warner Cable had said at the time that it believed that consumers who download the most content need to pay more to cover infrastructure upgrades. The plan was first announced two weeks ago, then modified with higher download caps last week. In a news release yesterday, Glenn Britt, the chief executive of Time Warner Cable, said, 'We will not proceed with implementation of additional tests until further consultation with our customers and other interested parties, ensuring that community needs are being met.'"

Comments

Um...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/16/2047220&art_pos=27

Re:Um...

[SashaMan]

In fairness, that article is a report that Time Warner was originally planning to postpone the cap tests until later this year. The news here is that now they've scrapped the idea altogether. A big difference, especially if you live in Austin.

Other interested parties

[Xian97]

I am assuming that the other interested parties were US Congressmen...

From arstechnica.com:
That "misunderstanding" went all the way to the top. Congressman Eric Massa (D-NY) last week announced his plan to introduce a bill placing limits on the ability of companies like TWC to cap its connections, especially in areas where it was a virtual monopoly. But it took a heavier hitterâ"in this case, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY)â"to make TWC change its ways.

Here's how that works

[HangingChad]

"may return to the idea in the future"

So they'll keep that in their back pocket and every time they need to actually put some money into infrastructure improvements, they'll trot this out. Oh, if we could only meter billing for the really big users. Everything that's wrong with telecomm and the internet will hang on this issue. If we could just do this, then everything would be better. They'll pay for PR press hits in industry rags, try to make it look like an inevitable development. They'll wait for the political climate to change, the regulatory environment, like a stubborn infection they'll be ready to strike the moment defenses are weak.

Help New York Rep. Eric Massa

[Dan667]

Support his bill to "encourage" what Time Warner can do with the $200 billion in infrastructure that was paid for by taxpayers.
http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/04/congressman
Write your congressman to support this bill
https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml
Get it passed.

Re:Help New York Rep. Eric Massa

[Dan667]

http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/04/congressman-to.html

Re:Wouldn't be all that upset

[Binestar]

Road Runner recently killed their USENET service. If you want usenet you need to get an outside source.

Re:The problem is, Time Warner is right

[langelgjm]

Heh, your nick is funny given the content of your post.

The problem, though, is that this isn't just a typical shared resource. If we were talking about food, or oil, or water, of course a flat-rate, all-you-can-eat model wouldn't work. All of those are commodities that can be used up.

Internet access is different. You can't "use up" your connection, in the sense of permanently depleting it, requiring that more be made or acquired. All you can do is saturate it. Obviously if too many people seek to saturate a finite connection at one time, there won't be enough to go around, but there's no permanent depletion. That's not exactly the same as the traditional tragedy of the commons.

To make an analogy, think of a buffet that serves chicken wings. Let's assume they can serve 1000 wings per hour, and that the wings have a marginal cost of $0.

So, if we only serve 100 customers at a time and assume that they will eat 10 wings / hr., we should be alright. Now, maybe we decide to oversell our capacity, and serve 200 people at a time, banking that the average customer only eats 5 wings / hr. Sure, they may be a few who gorge themselves and eat 25 wings an hour, but they'll be balanced out.

Now, we notice that the average person is eating 20 wings an hour. So, we have several options. We could only admit 50 people at a given time. We could serve 2000 wings an hour, and still take 100 people. We could limit everyone to 10 wings an hour. Or, we could ditch the buffet idea, and start changing everyone $1 / wing.

Notice which one of those doesn't actually solve the capacity problem: charging per wing. Sure, maybe it discourages people from gorging themselves on 100 wings, but if the average consumption is rising, charging by wing doesn't fix the capacity problem.