Slashdot Log In
Time Warner To Offer Unlimited Bandwidth For $150
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri Apr 10, 2009 01:46 PM
from the super-size-me dept.
from the super-size-me dept.
unr3a1 writes to tell us that Time Warner Cable has responded to the massive criticism of its new plan to cap user bandwidth with a new pricing model. Users will be given a grace period in which to assess their pricing tier. The "overages" will be noted on their bill, allowing them to change either their billing plan or their usage patterns. "On top of a 5, 10, 20, and 40-gigabyte (GB) caps, the company said this week that it would offer an additional 100GB tier for heavy users. Prices (so far) would range from $29.95 to $75.00 a month, with users charged an extra dollar for every GB more they download, although that charge is also capped at $75. An 'unlimited' bandwidth plan, therefore, tops out at $150."
Related Stories
[+]
Your Rights Online: Time Warner Transfer Caps May Inspire Fair-Price Legislation 382 comments
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."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Oblig (Score:5, Insightful)
-Comment about lack of competition
-Comment about poor quality of US bandwidth relative to other countries
What did I miss?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
What did I miss?
Obligatory conspiracy theory about how the info of unlimited-bandwidth account holders will be faxed to RIAA lawyers and their private investigators.
You missed... (Score:5, Insightful)
Obligatory mention of 1996 Telecommunications Act that these fuckers still have yet to deliver upon, and it's past their deadline. What did we give out 200 billion for, again? To get screwed over?
This would be a perfect FML post from our citizens as a collective whole.
"Today, We paid $200 billion to the telecom companies to deliver bidirectional 45mbit internet and 500 channels to our houses. They told us to fuck off, capped our data rates, charged us more, and sold our asses out to the NSA. FML."
Parent
Re:Oblig (Score:5, Insightful)
Obligatory observation that having the perspective that someone happens to have it worse still doesn't change the fact that these guys suck.
Parent
Re:Oblig (Score:5, Insightful)
Oblig comment about how those $150 dollar/month heavy users will likely still be throttled anyway, regardless of any promises or assurances the company is going to make to the contrary.
Parent
Re:Oblig (Score:5, Interesting)
Oblig comment about how those $150 dollar/month heavy users will likely still be throttled anyway, regardless of any promises or assurances the company is going to make to the contrary.
Oblig comment about likely all unlimited users' information will make it into the hands of the MPAA/RIAA, who will conclude that the only way a user could use that much bandwidth is if they were pirating copyrighted content.
Parent
Re:Oblig (Score:5, Informative)
Considering that the parent company of Time Warner is the same as Warner Music and Warner Bros, they don't have to do anything for it to make its way into their hands.
Parent
Re:Oblig (Score:5, Funny)
Oblig snide comment about how most of these are not really oblig comments.
Parent
Re:Oblig (Score:5, Informative)
I just pay for a business connection....nice and speedy, no caps, no blocked ports, I can run servers all I want and I even have a very low level SLA for uptimes. Service is normally great (a little less great post Katrina). All for only $70/mo....
Nice side benefit...you can split the incoming line, and get free analog tv off it, as well as the free HDTV/digital channels that are unencrypted. I run these into my mythtv boxes.
Anyway, does this company not offer a business connection? If you want more bandwidth than they give on the consumer side, get a business connection. It isn't like you have to show them a license or anything....
Parent
Re:Oblig (Score:4, Insightful)
Obilig note that 150gb is really 75gb DOWN and 75gb UP. During the fall when the bulk of the TV shows are released I think, downloading at "standard quality", not 720p, downloading the top tier of shows worth watching, plus whatever HBO and Showtime series are decent, will put you at about 80gb a month right there, not including any movies, music or online games you play. This has been my experience. I only watch perhaps 1-2 hours of "TV" during the busy fall season a day.
$150 a month would be nice, and not that much more expensive than paying for cable internet + cable TV, and it's about half the price of a T1 line in a residential neighborhood. The bonus is that you can now download and upload 720p TV shows without being throttled after X gigabytes a week (X = about 20gb a week for Time Warner in Dallas). Once you upgrade to a 22 or 24" monitor, there's a noticeable difference between "standard definition" pirated TV and 720p. I'm not sure if it's worth an extra $100 a month though.
Parent
Re:Oblig (Score:5, Informative)
You were saying?
Parent
Re:Oblig (Score:5, Funny)
Really unlimited, we have caned it for three years now...
Now I know what my problem is; I haven't beaten my internet connection often enough.
Parent
WOW (Score:4, Funny)
Re:WOW (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I guess they finally figured out how to make pirates pay. And the artist still gets no money.
Parent
Re:WOW (Score:5, Funny)
Coming soon, Telco Definitions..
Instead of 800 Minutes a month (every call rounded up to nearest minute)
they are going to release:
40 GB A MONTH*
*All transfers rounded up to nearest Gigabyte..
Parent
Re:WOW (Score:5, Interesting)
To these people, users of Hulu and Netflix aren't seen as so different from pirates. They believe that none of them are paying enough. And their outrage at having to actually reevaluate their business models is going to show itself in an orgy of price-gouging until they are prosecuted as monopolies and broken into a thousand little pieces.
If you really want to be made sick, go look at a corporate chart of Time-Warner and see just how much of our society they have seized while our government, in a sickening display of anti-regulatory corporate dick-sucking, has just let them do it.
It's a small thing, but one must never pay for any product from Time Warner, as long as there is an alternative. And if there is not, simply do without. It is surprisingly easy.
Parent
Re:WOW (Score:4, Insightful)
To these people, users of Hulu and Netflix aren't seen as so different from pirates. They believe that none of them are paying enough. And their outrage at having to actually reevaluate their business models is going to show itself in an orgy of price-gouging until they are prosecuted as monopolies and broken into a thousand little pieces.
Ok, I agree with some of your post, but in all seriousness they DID reevaluate their business model. Seriously, they looked at Netflix and Hulu and said decided to make money with their cable (wire to house) business.
The fact is that "if" everyone hates this as much as posted here on Slashdot (and I am not fond of it), then there is a great opportunity for someone to come along and develop a good alternative. The bar has been set at $150/month and now we can see what or if anyone can come in cheaper.
Parent
Re:WOW (Score:5, Funny)
I'm getting a way better deal than this. 6Mbps down/512 up, unlimited bandwidth, and it's $45/mo. My ISP is Time Warner.
Oh shit...
Parent
Anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there anyone who didn't see this coming?
First they whine that unlimited is not unlimited. Then they put a number on what 'unlimited' is, and change the contract that you had already signed. Then they decide that they can actually give you the service you originally signed up for, but only if you pay them $150 more.
Re:Anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
So you mean to tell me that things change? Holy I-Ching Batman! The providers are becoming more transparent and letting you know what you will get depending on what you pay. Up until a year or two ago, an "unlimited" connection really was unlimited. For most subscribers, it still is unlimited. Only the people out there on the cutting edge are bumping up against the caps. There is finally enough content available that people are able to tax their connections nearly full time. Being asked to pay $150 a month for truly unlimited internet access isn't that bad of a deal.
I'm only thirty, but I'm already having an old man moment here. I don't think a lot the people posting on Slashdot realize how far technology has come. I remember connecting to the internet at 14400. I remember connecting to BBSes at 2400 baud and being able to type faster than the connection could echo back the characters. Busy signals were a constant problem. Swapping 1.44MB worth of data took over an hour (at 2400 baud). If you dialed outside of your LATA, you had to pay toll charges. Compared to back then (get off my lawn!), we're in a totally different world. The amount of content that is available nearly instantenously is mind boggling. Until I discovered ways around things, I was spending hundreds of dollars a month in phone charges to get the same kind of software that I can get from the Pirate Bay... and that was in the mid-1990s.
The term "entitlement generation" has reached my ears from time to time, and discussions like this one serve to highlight the truth of the matter. Where the hell do you people think all of this capability comes from? Do you think that the cable company just plugs in a router, and all of a sudden "the Internet" just works? I wonder how many network engineers Time Warner employees. I wonder how much those guys make a year. How about field techs? Customer service operators? Sales reps? How much do they have to pay in property taxes and electricity to keep their CO's running?
Here's a dose of reality for everyone. If you don't like the prices, don't pay them. If you can do without, do without. If you can't, suck it up and deal with it. You don't need a 10mb+ pipe to get on the Internet. Spend $25 a month and get a DSL line and you won't have to worry about bandwidth caps. I was on a 3mb DSL line up until this year, and it worked just fine. It cost me $45 a month. I make far more than that in a couple of hours at work. Lets say you make $20 an hour, and given that this is Slashdot, I'd be surprised if anyone made any less than that. For one day's worth of work, you get unlimited, high speed internet access for a month. Now check your reality. Is one day worth of your labor worth an unfair trade for the labor of all of the people who have to labor for you to have an always on, available, high speed internet connection? Or is your labor so much more valuable to society that the one day of your labor is worth so much more than the labor of all the other people who give you 30+/-1 days a month worth of internet access?
Parent
'Bandwidth' is a Misleading Term Here (Score:5, Informative)
Time Warner To Offer Unlimited Bandwidth For $150
When will the hurting stop? Bandwidth is measured in kbit/s, Mbit/s, etc. Please express this in some rate related to seconds if you're going to use it because the phrase "unlimited bandwidth" means to me that I should be able to sit down and at the drop of a hat (or the spinning of several platters) have a DVD from my friend's computer located on my computer.
... not as seksi as bandwidth but for the love of god please keep these ideas separate. Unless you're going to start talking about bandwidth as in GB/month or TB/month which would drive the hardware and network guys nuts because that is a meaningless metric.
I think a more appropriate term would be something like "no monthly download limit" or some such thing
Re:'Bandwidth' is a Misleading Term Here (Score:5, Informative)
Amen. It's not "unlimited bandwidth"; it's "unlimited usage".
And it's not even that; if you drill down, the $150 plan is actually a $75-for-100gb/mo, with a promise to cap overage charges at $75 -- thus virtually unlimited usage for $150. How long before they renege on that particular promise?
Here's the article's source; sadly, it's the original source of the confused use of the term "bandwidth": http://a.longreply.com/109511 [longreply.com]
Parent
And that's the problem - they don't understand (Score:5, Informative)
I'm one of the fortunate few to be in Rochester, NY and fall under the tyranny of Time Warner Cable. I've talked to their customer service reps. I've read their statements. And yesterday I had the opportunity to hear some of their low-level execs try and defend the plan at a town hall meeting with our congressional representative (who's on our side BTW).
They simply don't acknowledge that access (bandwidth) is not at issue here, limiting the use of that bandwidth in terms of some arbitrary amount of data is the issue.
If you look at their 2008 SEC filings (linked by their corporate site timewarnercable.com [timewarnercable.com] then you'd see their costs went down about 12% from 2007 and their revenues and new customers both rose about 10% over 2007. Clearly usage is not really an issue.
The issue they're not admitting to (except in their SEC filing) is Internet video like Hulu and Netflix is their primary threat and the way to mediate this threat is to make it more expensive to watch videos on the Internet than to pay Time Warner for cable and Video on Demand services.
Parent
Re:'Bandwidth' is a Misleading Term Here (Score:4, Informative)
(I picked up a nasty pedantic habit in college from a professor, so sorry I just have to throw this in :)
Bandwidth is the capacity of a communications channel and is measured in Hz and Mhz. kbit/s and Mbit/s are data rates, not bandwidth.
Parent
Re:'Bandwidth' is a Misleading Term Here (Score:4, Informative)
(I picked up a nasty pedantic habit in college from a professor, so sorry I just have to throw this in :)
Bandwidth is the capacity of a communications channel and is measured in Hz and Mhz. kbit/s and Mbit/s are data rates, not bandwidth.
Actually, you're wrong to make that correction.
Your definition is correct, and historically your definition was more common, but bandwidth now has two definitions:
1. The numerical difference between the upper and lower frequencies of a band of electromagnetic radiation, especially an assigned range of radio frequencies.
2. The amount of data that can be passed along a communications channel in a given period of time.
So when being pedantic, do it right at least.
Also note that, as people have said, bandwidth is still being used incorrectly in the article, because they can't possibly supply unlimited bandwidth, but not for the reason you state.
-Taylor
Parent
I may not be reading this right, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I have a feeling when you reach $75 in overages, they simply cut you off and tell you if you want access again you either have to fork over the difference for the $150 plan or wait until your next billing cycle. Also I'd presume the $29.95 plan is at the lowest speed possible which might be low enough that to reach the $75 cap you'd need to run your connection at full speed for the entire month (although I doubt it, it's possible).
I wonder how long it's going to be before Comcast pulls this crap. Also now
No such thing as unlimited (Score:5, Funny)
You have to draw a line somewhere, and put a price under it.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
They have to cut you off eventually because they don't own the entire network. Yes, throughput is "free", but its the easiest way to charge for usage over a period of time. That way downloading at 6mb/s one day, and not downloading at all the next, evens itself out.
The ISP itself cannot hammer the entire internet continually, but it -can- spike. Thus -> throughput over time. If you use 6mb/s for 1 hour, its not as big a deal as if you use 1mb/s for 6 hours. You have a much more lasting impact in the late
Cheaper across the pond - for once (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Cheaper across the pond - for once (Score:4, Funny)
On the other hand, everyone in the country must be getting bulk discounts on CCTV surveillance cameras by now... :)
Parent
Clarification on $75 (Score:3, Interesting)
The other story I saw on this said that the monthly bill was capped at $75. They assumed that meant subscription + overages. So the 'unlimited' plan would be only $75. (Still high for an ISP only charge.)
Is there a 'horse's mouth' release anywhere that doesn't have that ambiguity?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Is there a 'horse's mouth' release anywhere that doesn't have that ambiguity?
http://a.longreply.com/109511 [longreply.com]
Not terribly surprising (Score:5, Informative)
Definitely disappointing, but not surprising.
The problem is, residential broadband networks were never designed to handle the uses many people make of them nowadays (particularly due to P2P) - there are some heavy users who transfer terabytes of (sometimes of dubious legality) information every month.. it is unreasonable for these people to pay the same price as someone who just checks their e-mail and sends photos to their grandchildren.
The caps and prices here are quite unacceptable - double the cap and half the price, and maybe we're talking..
Re:Not terribly surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Those of us that are more technically inclined should not be punished because of the "average user", who are in all likelihood the people on the phone with Dell when their wireless mouse runs out of batteries...
Who cares if you're "technically inclined"? If you're using orders of magnitude more bandwidth than the average user, I think it's perfectly reasonable that you pay significantly more.
Ideally, prices should boil down to a reasonable margin over actual costs. It costs your ISP a certain amount to install and maintain the equipment that supports your connection no matter how much you do or don't use, and every MB of bandwidth that you consume that goes out of their network has a cost. The price to you sh
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I agree, and actually, I'd propose that what is considered "average" use is changing. The story of typical usage being light browsing and checking email is tired. Average use now is downloading music and movies from iTunes, streaming video from Hulu, Youtube, and Netflix. And online gaming via Xbox Live and Wii Arcade.
What happens when today's "heavy" users become tomorrow's "average" users?
Re:Not terribly surprising (Score:4, Interesting)
Albany, NY was one of RoadRunner's test cities, and they ran it out of Troy, NY, just down the street from RPI. If you want to find a group of people who are going to abuse a system, RPI students are right up there. Regardless of what residential broadband networks are designed for, I know what they were actually used for in 1997 during RR's ramp up. The problems RR faces now are problems they had at the beginning -- a buddy of mine paid his tuition using ad revenue from hosting a porn site on his residential cable modem. They say P2P is bad because it's hundreds of incoming connections and a whole pile of outgoing bandwidth -- exactly what this buddy of mine was doing for his $40/month residential connection. Roadrunner handled Napster well, and it handled the next P2P replacements well.
Roadrunner used to control their bandwidth by mirroring major destinations (TuCows, back when it was interesting, for example) and peering with bigger ones with dynamic content. Time was, their binaries usenet collection was the best around.
Roadrunner and the mega corps want to decrease their costs -- everybody wins when they get special peering with major destinations. Private pipes to YouTube, Hulu and the like will take care of their video streaming costs much better than the typical general purpose backbones. Major outfits like YouTube who have hundreds of easily deployable servers could certainly come up with a handful of mirrors for the most in-demand content and put it on RoadRunner's own network. BitTorrent's P4P and Ono, with the cooperation of the ISP, can drastically reduce the load on the ISP -- but RoadRunner is seemingly absent.
10 years ago, RoadRunner was on the forefront of doing everything right and treating the customer the right way (I disagreed with them on disabling accounts of those of us who had personal mail servers, but I now see it was prophetic). Today, they have lost sight of their ability to find win-win situations with new partners.
Parent
A good first step (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:A good first step (Score:4, Insightful)
But they won't. The bottom price will be what they pay now and everyone else will just pay more. Prices are never going to be reduced.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And what this translates into, is that use under-using people are STILL subsidizing just as much as you were before. The heavy users are just helping to line the pockets of the shareholders a bit more, because you know they won't stop and say "hey... if we have so many people hitting the caps, perhaps we should spend that extra cash and flush out our network better.". They'll do exactly what they did with the billions they were given in the past to build out the network and shower it on their investors.
Netflix (Score:5, Insightful)
And THIS time (Score:5, Insightful)
Unlimited, and this time, we mean it. Trust us.
What's the point?! (Score:5, Interesting)
If you are trying to sell high-speed access, you need to assume that people are going to be downloading about half a terabyte worth of HD video content a month. If the system cannot support that for every customer (10MBit average sustained four hours a day), then you are in the wrong business.
The more I read about these companies' stupidity, the more I want to start a co-op ISP. In LA it isn't that hard to lease a wavelength off of DWP (assuming you have them passing nearby) to connect to one of the hubs in El Segundo, Downtown, or wherever. Negotiate with a community for the right to run local links, and you can have a system installed for under $500 per node, and all your costs are paid after 12 months, with just bandwidth remaining.
This isn't rocket science...
Next step (Score:3, Insightful)
'Friends and family' websites. Get unlimited Gb to your 5 favorite websites. You can choose Google, /., Reddit, Engadget, LKML while little Suzie can choose MySpace, Facebook, Digg, Twitter, AmericanIdol.
This kind of bs shouldn't be allowed to happen.
Sham (Score:4, Insightful)
The only reason they want caps is because they know that the internet is starting to compete with their cable offerings. It has nothing to do with bandwidth. They are already upgrading their infrastructure to support huge amounts of bandwidth. The cost to do so is minimal for cable because the latest upgrade happens to occur at the head end and at the modem in the house. That is $40-$100 a home half of which is paid for by the consumer. That is nothing to charge or make back. What they really want to do is tier their pricing in a way that they cannot be out competed by internet TV. We need to break this MaBell up now.
Time Warner has rising costs? (Score:4, Informative)
"High-speed data costs decreased for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2008 primarily due to a decrease in per-subscriber connectivity costs, partially offset by subscriber growth.
"In 2007, TW made $3,730 Million, on high speed data alone, and then had to turn around and spend $164 Million to support the cost of the network. 2007 total profit on high speed data: $3.566 Billion"
"In 2008, TW made $4,159 Million, on high speed data alone, and then had to turn around and spend $146 Million to support the cost of the network. 2008 total profit on high speed data: $4.013 Billion"
$1 per GB -- 4x the cost of DVD+stamp (Score:5, Insightful)
That's just insane. It makes it 10 times more expensive than to send a burnt DVD ($.5?) through the mail (~$1 I guess?).
That pricing scheme is about as out of touch as Dr Evil in that scene where he asks for a ridiculous $1 million ransom for not blowing up the planet.
You can get internet transit in a datacenter on the order of $6 per Mbps per month wholesale; peering is way below that.
That mean that for $6 you can transfer ~320GB a month; Warner is going to charge 50 times that.
Sure, it's not the same thing entirely obviously, but the main difference is that you have to build a line to the customer, and you're paying for that already whether you use it very little or a lot.
The only remaining difference therefore is the connection between local concentrators and the backbone; nothing special and particularly expensive about it.
Therefore this is a total rip-off, and most likely monopoly abuse.
Re:Wheres the friking backlash? (Score:4, Informative)
Because I, the ISP, have formed a pact with your local government to prevent Speakeasy (or any other meaningful competition) from servicing your area of the country.
Parent
Re:Sorry, but those limits will never happen (Score:4, Informative)
Assuming your estimate of 60 MB per hour is correct, their 100GB/month account will let you play Left4Dead for 56 hours a day without paying any overcharge fees. Is that enough for you?
Parent