Time Warner Boosts Broadband Customer Speed — But Only Near Google Fiber

An anonymous reader writes " Rob is a Time Warner Cable customer, and he's received two really interesting things from them lately. First, a 50% speed boost: they claim to have upgraded the speed of his home Internet connection. That's neat. Oh, and they've also cut his bill, from $45 to $30. Wow! What has prompted this amazing treatment? Years of loyalty and on-time payments? No, not exactly. Rob lives in Kansas City, pilot site for Google Fiber. Even though they have shut off people in other states for using too much bandwidth. Is Google making them show that it's not that hard to provide good service and bandwidth?"

Comments

Good

[stewsters]

This is what healthy competition is supposed to do to the market. Now, we need google fiber in more cities and the average speed and price of internet will get better for everyone (unless you live in a rural area).

Re:Good

[bmo]

>This is an unsustainable race to the bottom.

Bullshit. It's been established that caps and rate limiting are just a cash grab. And the customer has been raped enough through billing ever since we threw billions of taxpayers' money at the network providers in the 90s only to watch it go out as dividends to shareholders and board bonuses.

Competition is *always* good.

--
BMO

Re:Good

[afidel]

Yep, look at the cost per Mbps for colo bandwidth versus last mile, they were on a roughly parallel trajectory until the media companies bought up the cable companies and decided to increase costs to protect their existing models, they can only do that because in most markets they have a monopoly/duopoly position, give them some real competition and suddenly things get back on track.

Re:Good

[SilentStaid]

They either need to do the upgrades or give back the tax money.

Could you imagine if the world worked like that? How awesome would that be? Unfortunately, their lobbying pockets are a bit deeper than yours or mine will ever be.

Re:Good

[mea_culpa]

I agree so long as the government doesn't choose winners and losers like they have done and still currently do.
AT&T prior to the breakup is a good example of how far this cronyism can go. Don't get me started on the industrial media complex. Right now it is cellular carriers and cable companies. Both are using public resources unfairly.
Your public road analogy is good, but if you were to accurately compare it to the telecommunication industry there would be roads that only Ford, Chevy, and Crystler vehicles were allowed to drive on. Chevy would make and agreement with Ford to allow eachother's cars on their roads but not Toyota, KIA and many others. The barrier to entry would be so high that newer better cars would not be allowed in.

When Cox bought out our local Cable America in Phoenix all they did was switch subscribers over, and charge 20% more. Did they use any of the infrastructure of the competitor that they bought out? No, they systematically dismantled it. All of those years of negotiations with various municipalities to get access to easements, poles, alley ways, etc. all gone. The millions of dollars spent to install that mostly redundant infrastructure also gone. There is no possible way now, unless you are Google, to come in and compete with them.

It's called competetion

[Dyinobal]

It's called competition, which is something that has been sorely lacking in the broadband market. It's actually missing in just about any market that is dominated by a few large corporations. See the publishing industry etc.

Re:It's called competetion

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what happens in industries where mergers are unregulated. Good regulation preserves competition. No regulation kills competition as much as bad regulation.

Old Comparison

[Bill Hayden]

I'm not at all one to defend the Cable/Internet/Cell monopolies that currently exist, but the linked story about people getting shut off is 4 YEARS old!