Time Warner Expanding Internet Transfer Caps To New Markets 394
Akido37 writes "Time Warner Cable is expanding its transfer capping program to new markets in Rochester, NY, Austin, TX, San Antonio, TX, and Greensboro, NC. It seems they have been testing plans with 5, 10, 20, or 40GB of data transfer per month, with prices ranging from $30 to $55 a month. BusinessWeek quotes Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt saying, 'We need a viable model to be able to support the infrastructure of the broadband business ... We made a mistake early on by not defining our business based on the consumption dimension.' Ars Technica adds, 'The BusinessWeek article notes that only 14 percent of users in TWC's trial city of Beaumont, Texas even exceeded their caps at all. My own recent conversations with other major ISPs suggest that the average broadband user only pulls down 2-6GB of data per month as it is. One the one hand, this suggests that caps don't really bother most people; on the other, it indicates that low cap levels aren't needed to keep traffic 'reasonable' since it's actually quite low to begin with.'"
Conflict of interest (Score:5, Insightful)
Time Warner has an interest in keeping media businesses under control, therefore it cannot allow streaming services to gain traction. Video streaming in HDTV quality will easily reach these limits, but almost no other internet usage will.
This is amazing... (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't this really pre-emption of competition? (Score:5, Insightful)
5GB/ MONTH? (Score:5, Insightful)
FUCK. THAT. Thankfully I don't have Time Warner. Unfortunately I do have Concast. I already got warned once for being over my 250GB limit. Since they want to charge me $7/mo more for an HD converter box (that I can't buy anywhere, only rent from them) that my tv does natively (and at a higher resolution over the air than what they send compressed) and I actually pay for. The basic subscription I pay for includes HD channels but I can't watch them unless I pay for the converter box or plug the cable straight into my tv and lose the ability to watch On Demand programs. So I download the programs I do want to watch in high def.
Want a good comparison? Take the amount of time the average customer spends per month watching tv. Calculate the relative bitrate for a tv program (including commercials) adjusting for resolution, multiply it by the average viewing time, and I guarantee you it will be greater than the any of the current bandwidth caps. Bandwidth caps are bullshit. They're just another way to milk more money out of the consumer. The system can handle it. If they need more bandwidth for the whole network, light up the dark fiber and/or upgrade the infrastructure we already paid for years ago.
Price fixing practically... (Score:4, Insightful)
They're attempting to force "heavy users" to pony up for bandwidth that already exists in abundance in their network.
My own ISP started bandwidth capping in the last year and a half and cut me down to 60GB without notice and I was pissed. Personally I wouldn't be surprised if the *IAA's of the world are influencing these decisions.
Re:14% is a lot (Score:4, Insightful)
Comcast... Maybe this will be just the thing to spark some competition!
You must be new here...
Re:Online gaming usage? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Only 40Gb/month? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe this is redundant but I think it needs to be said.
If you're on Time Warner, call and complain. Tell them that as a result of this new policy you are researching alternatives and as soon as you find one you will be canceling service. Let them know that you will be telling you family and friends who are less technically minded to start looking for alternatives too. Remind them that even if their profits on heavy users are slimmer, it is those same users who the rest of their customers go to for advice.
Then follow through, and make sure that everyone you get to switch tells the operator that "A friend who is very knowledgeable recently canceled your service because... and recommended I do the same."
Re:Only 40Gb/month? (Score:5, Insightful)
640KB is enough for anyone (Score:4, Insightful)
My own recent conversations with other major ISPs suggest that the average broadband user only pulls down 2-6GB of data per month as it is.
And, in the days of 56.6kbps modems, just about no one pulled down 100MB of data per month. Why don't we cap it there?
Oh yeah... because we actually like society advancing not staying stagnant.
Just because most users don't, currently, constantly bang up against capacity limits, that's no reason to cap them at it to ensure they will as their usage patterns grow. Well, OK, it is if you're terrified their usage patterns are going to include cancelling your hugely profitable cable TV service and watching their content online. Which, let's face it, is the real reason these caps are getting introduced almost exclusively by organizations who don't want you able to circumvent their other business model.
Re:Only 40Gb/month? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the correct answer if you are in one of their markets and are presently affected. If you are not presently affected, there is no sense in drawing attention to yourself. Presently, I am a Time-Warner internet user and prior to that, AT&T and Comcast... been bought and sold a lot. During this time, the market for ADSL has expanded greatly to the point that my download speeds are very very good as there are far fewer cable internet users in my area than DSL. I get over 1MB/sec downloads on my torrents quite often. I have no need to complain at this time.
But your suggestions for argument are exactly what is needed as feedback to the company. Eventually, they will listen... they will have to. If they brought it to my market, I would absolutely insist on using ADSL as leverage against their actions.
Many users have no effective way to measure their own usage and have no way to keep tally of their downloads either. This is especially true as P2P technologies are increasingly being used in Netflix and other such legitimate services.
Re:Online gaming usage? (Score:5, Insightful)
How about digital delivery? Steam, XBox Live Marketplace, and PSN? You can legally download original XBox and PS1 games through those networks, and plenty of games through Steam can top 5 GB by themselves.
Re:Caps are... (Score:2, Insightful)
Time Warner will figure this out again soon when their competitors get a good hold on their market.
Competitors? In the United States? That's a laugh.
Austin's a tech town. Let's fight this! (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's fight this, Austinites. My gf and I are engineers, and we VNC into work on weekends and for late nights, and we use more than 2GB/month just on that.
Here's the letter I'm sending to my senators and representatives. I need to figure out who to send it to at Time Warner and the Statesman. (The big newspaper, for out-of-towners.) I'm looking for advice and critique and sources for some of the arguments I've heard here. (Look for the [brackets])
Dear ________,
I am an electrical engineer with *company*, and like many engineers in the emerging high-tech center of Austin, I rely on high-speed Internet connections to my home. In these times of economic hardship, it is more important than ever for working professionals to be able to access work computers and other information quickly and economically.
Time Warner Cable has announced that they are implementing tight limits on the amount of information that they will provide to users of their cable modem services. While Austin's workers attempt to reach a compromise between work and family life by accessing critical business operations over the Internet, Time Warner plans to restrict their networks for these heavy users. They are instituting these caps in spite of the fact that a vast capacity of their fiber-optic lines remain unused, and in [year], Congress gave [millions] of dollars to cable companies to improve our nation's digital infrastructure.
For Time Warner to pocket this investment and make no improvements, then attempt to extort outrageous fees that infrastructure from Austin area workers, is outrageous. Only the fact that there is no significant competition for broadband access allows cable companies to unilaterally impose these restrictions on those of us who depend on the Internet for our livelihood. As Congress has given heavily to cable companies and has seen no improvements, I would urge you to closely examine the stranglehold this company has upon Austin's digital infrastructure and the abuse of monopoly power that this upcoming cap represents.
I look forward to your quick action in this matter, [and I anticipate supporting you in [your next election] (for elected officials) ].
*OpenGLFan*
Re:Only 40Gb/month? (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone could think it is the exact opposite, as in you're not using what you paid for. But I don't think either is true. In reality, you chose to pay for a connection that had a certain capacity even though you knew you didn't need it. But you thought it was a fair deal, the seller thought it was a fair deal, you both agreed, you're both happy. The GP went to the same seller, thought it was a good deal, the seller thought it was a good deal, both agreed, and both are happy.
I don't get angry because someone else spends longer at the gym than I do, even though we're both spending the same monthly amount. If I really thought it was unfair, I could spend more time there, or ask to pay less, or go somewhere else where they limit the time you can spend in a gym.
Re:Only 40Gb/month? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Conflict of interest (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't emphasize how important a point you've just made.
The cable and telecom providers have collectively decided to create in peoples minds the idea that a "reasonable" cap is a few dozen GB, give or take: a level set so as to discourage the small but growing number of users who download much of their video and don't bother spending $1000/year on broadcast cable / satellite. From the cableco's perspective, the worst of it is that the users downloading video are exactly the technically literate sort that want, and under other circumstances might be willing to pay for, high-end cable packages with HD channels.
Bandwidth is just not that expensive, nor is it anywhere near as scarce as the cable companies are suggesting. This issue is being framed in terms of cost and scarcity to hide the fact that this is just protecting an old business model and its rather generous revenue stream.
This would suck for me right now (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Only 40Gb/month? (Score:5, Insightful)
Guess what? Time Warner wants those people to switch, since they are the ones breaking their overselling calculations. The quicker TW can unload the high-volume users, the better it is for TW. That is, of course, unless high-volume users pay additional charges for their excess volume over the cap. Then, those users are profitable again for TW.
Personally, I think tiered pricing by volume is a good idea, since it more fairly distributes the cost of providing service.
Plus, I was able to download some 8 TB of porn before there were caps, so I'm good for a while.
Re:Conflict of interest (Score:3, Insightful)
And there are many others.
Re:Only 40Gb/month? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Only 40Gb/month? (Score:3, Insightful)
So you are want to get people who would never hit the cap to switch in order to protest that they are no longer cross-subsidising you?
It is perfectly reasonable to charge heavy users more.
It is a lot better than Comcasts approach of a high cap and cutting off those who breach it twice.
Re:Only 40Gb/month? (Score:5, Insightful)
Here in San Diego, I have one of their RoadRunner packages. I get up to 8Mbps (and often the full 8Mbps), but I see it's also common to have up to 50Mbps. On a 5Mbps line you can download about 50GB in 24 hours. On an 8Mbps line just over 80GB. TW reps have announced a 100GB "super-tier" via Twitter. Even so, you can exhaust that in under 2 days at only 5Mbps.
Sounds like a lot of bandwidth? 720p H.264 will run 5-6Mbps for decent quality (my opinion). If you watch 24 hours of it you'll blow through their 40GB plan in around 19 hours of viewing (based on 5Mbps avg for the video). 1080p? Let's call it 8Mbps average for the video bitrate (favorable for the ISP in my opinion) and you'll exceed your $55 plan (according to the summary) after watching only 12 hours worth of content.
Tier based pricing such as this will kill innovative new services. If this becomes commonplace I doubt you'll see some of the video sites emerging today serving a lot of HD. We're even less likely to see online music stores adopting lossless formats. Because end users will only be able to download a limited amount per month there will be less pressure to lower bandwidth prices for backbone/CDN - "demand" (and I use that term loosely in this context) will outstrip supply.
I see it like this: Thanks to things like YouTube HD, Hulu, Netflix online, Veoh, and so forth, we're *all* downloading more, no matter what the ISPs try to tell us "the majority of their customers" use. Their margins will be getting squeezed. You aren't benefiting from this new tiered model because "you aren't subsidizing high use users" - you're going to be paying about the same, if not more, and your plan will give you less downloads and greater risk (if you exceed it).
I also cannot help but wonder for ISPs that are linked to media giants whether there is some line of thinking that says "We're bleeding due to piracy, people are dropping their cable packages, motions against BitTorrent haven't worked, let's find another way to stem the bleeding". If this were a factor it would be putting self protectionism against national infrastructure interests.
Anyway - the main thing to keep in mind is that this is not just an issue for your net access and wallet today, it will limit the kind of services and media that are developed tomorrow.
Re:Conflict of interest (Score:5, Insightful)
This is exactly right. How is it that it's prohibitively expensive for the average Joe to get decent connectivity, yet I can maintain a colocated server in a very nice data center at a constant 70 degrees F, with a UPS system that will keep my server up for two weeks after the mains goes away, with a terabyte of data transfer each month on a dedicated 100 megabit switch port (and I've yet to see my transfer rate drop below 10Mb/sec), and a
Re:Conflict of interest (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Only 40Gb/month? (Score:3, Insightful)
Absolutely agree that you should get a bill saying "you used this many GB" and multiply by the rate and that is what you pay, and that would by far make the most sense.
The service providers don't want this however. Same reason they only sell cable tv as "packages". Lots of people will end up paying a lot less, and those that pay more will have a strong incentive to go somewhere else. Also users will probably figure out that Flash ads are actually costing them 1 cent each (or whatever) and then they are going to be mad and *really* start blocking them.
For those reasons I don't think this is going to happen. I actually feel that a cap (plus the ability to do something on a web page that says "I know my bill will be increased, please turn off the cap now") is the best solution that anybody will actually consider.
Re:Conflict of interest (Score:4, Insightful)
ISPs have it within their means to offer vastly better service at the prices they currently charge while still making a substantial profit. They simply choose not to do so.
Re:Only 40Gb/month? (Score:5, Insightful)
With the exception of water, all of those other things you mention have very real marginal costs. The more you use, the more the company has to spend. Electricity costs the company proportionally because they have to use more fuel to produce it. With gas, after you exceed a certain amount, somebody has to go out and drill another oil well to capture more. Similarly, with water, if you exceed the natural capacity of the aquifer, the wells eventually dry up and you have to spend money to drill new ones and/or truck in water until the aquifer replenishes itself. Garbage service costs more because you have to hire more people to work more hours if people use it more heavily. There are very real, tangible marginal costs involved with all of those things.
Internet bandwidth is not like that at all. Initial infrastructure costs notwithstanding, the cost of moving a terabyte of data is approximately the same as the cost of moving a gigabyte. Adding lines to increase capacity costs money, but within the limits of the available bandwidth, the wires have to still be maintained and equipment periodically replaced whether you transfer a terabyte or a byte.
Also, all of the things you mention can be conserved and used later. By not using water, you are increasing the levels in the aquifer (to a point) that can be used later when you have a dry spell. By not using electricity, you are causing generators to be taken offline, saving fuel that can be used to produce power later. By not using as much gas, you are leaving gas in an oil field that can be retrieved later or stored in tanks for future consumption. Internet bandwidth, however, cannot be conserved. Once a second has passed, the gigabit you could have transferred in that time was either transferred or it wasn't. If it wasn't, you can't transfer two gigabits in the next second to make up for it.
The marginal cost of providing Internet bandwidth is zero, so the marginal cost to customers should also be zero. Customers should pay for the infrastructure costs amortized over the life of the hardware plus some percentage for profits. Any other scheme is a scam.
The problem is that these companies have lied to consumers for years saying that they can provide X Mbps (for some value of X) to customers in hopes that they would never really use that much, knowing full well that they were massively overselling their capacity to turn a substantial profit. Now, as customers start to do more with that bandwidth, instead of turning around those huge profits to expand the infrastructure, they are looking desperately for ways to continue to turn huge profits without actually improving the infrastructure. After all, it's not enough to break even. They have to make more profit than the year before to add value for their shareholders. At some point, such an economic model breaks down and they have to pay the piper. I think we're to that point, and no amount of tiered bandwidth is going to fix that. If they continue down this path instead of spending the money they need to spend to improve their infrastructure, they will soon be supplanted by disruptive technologies [slashdot.org]. Maybe that's good, but it certainly won't be good for companies like Time Warner.
Re:A threat that won't work. (Score:3, Insightful)
And those 5% of customers recommend service to the other 95%. Smart companies have long since learned that you do NOT piss off your "pro customers". It eventually comes back to bite you in the backside with such regularity that it almost goes without saying in most industries. The telecoms have near monopoly status, so they can afford to not care. For now. This, too will change.
Re:Only 40Gb/month? (Score:3, Insightful)
We're talking about Time Warner Cable here. They're a cable company. They make almost all of their money by selling pay-per-view movies and providing cable TV service. They see the direction of the market, and it is rapidly headed towards their main market being worthless as more and more people get their entertainment via the Internet. At that point, they will be a trivially replaceable commodity data pipe and their bread and butter dries up. Anything they can do to limit their customers' adoption of alternative ways of getting TV shows online is helping to extend their doomed TV-based business model that much farther.
Indeed, that's why I think the FCC and/or FTC need to step in and say, "No, you will not." This is a very clear example of anticompetitive monopoly abuse by TWC to stifle coming video-on-demand technologies, alternative distribution channels, etc. If the government allows this behavior to continue and to spread to other ISPs, in the long term, everyone loses.
First, they came for the downloaders, but I did not download, so I had nothing to fear. Then, they came for Slingbox, but I didn't own one, so I rolled my eyes. Then, they came for the YouTube users, but I did not use YouTube, so I did not care. Next, they came for the iTunes, Unbox, and Hulu users, but I never watched TV online, so I remained silent. Then, they came for me and there was no one left to speak out.