Time Warner To Offer Unlimited Bandwidth For $150 479
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."
Shooting themselves in the foot (Score:2, Interesting)
Just how greedy are these fuckers? If I wind up having to pay $150/month for internet, I'm going to cancel the cable TV, which is already approaching that amount. Can't imagine I'm the only one thinking along those lines. I guess TW's left hand doesn't care what its right hand is doing...
I may not be reading this right, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Wheres the friking backlash? (Score:2, Interesting)
Please mr. ISP, tell me again how you aren't a simpering moron?
Re:Oblig (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.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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...
Sorry, but those limits will never happen (Score:2, Interesting)
I demand an itemized list! (Score:2, Interesting)
If I go over, what's my recourse to dispute it? I want an itemized list of each movie I watched, icecast I streamed and stippercam to which I whacked off. Phone company does it, and we all KNOW they suck.
Also, what about roll-over gigs? Are nights and weekends free?
Personally, I have the lowest tier of TW business class through a deal my wife has at work. Wondering if I'll be affected. Hrm...
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.
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.
I like it (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh, the prices are too high, but I definitely like the fact that they're telling customers how much they can use for their money.
The whole "unlimited usage for a flat fee" model never really made any sense to me. Competition will force overselling of their actual bandwidth and just about begs for soft caps or other sorts of invisible limits.
At least in areas where there IS competition (which is unfortunately few in the US), a model where ISPs explicitly specify what you get for your money will cause competition to drive appropriate pricing. Yeah, a the segment of society that wants to be able to download 300 GB per month for a $30 flat monthly fee will be really disappointed, but that's reality -- bandwidth to your home costs more than 10 cents per GB (or wherever the actual number falls).
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.
Re:Oblig (Score:3, Interesting)
Obilig note that 150gb is really 75gb DOWN and 75gb UP.
No, it's 150GB. You get to choose how much you use for downloading vs. uploading, and I dare say very few of us are using equal portions.
While I'm at it, I don't see how this adds up to $150. I see they are adding the $75 max extra-data fee to the highest package price of $75, but that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. If their overage fees are capped and you know you're going to use more than 175GB of data transfer, why get the highest package? Get the cheapest package for $30 and let them charge you the extra $75. In other words, I think this should be titled, "Time Warner offers Unlimited Data Transfer for $105."