Time Warner Shelves Plans For Tiered Pricing 210
The FNP writes "Time Warner has postponed their plans to test tiered data caps in Greensboro NC, Rochester NY, San Antonio TX, and Austin TX. This announcement comes shortly after the media started reporting on Eric Massa's opposition and protests planned for this Saturday outside of Time Warner's offices in Greensboro and Rochester." There's also a good piece at Ars on the fall of the current tiered-pricing plans.
Re:dupe (Score:1, Informative)
its more of a follow up. they weren't planning on stopping the trials according to yesterday's story.
eh heh (Score:4, Informative)
Back in the mid 90's, Japanese telecoms decided that they would charge for a piece of each 'type' of phone action...one rate for voice, another for data, etc., while billing was based on quantity (metered.
This was while it was trivial to find service in North America that was flat rate, but still unique per type.
It didn't take much to find ways around the J billing hassles, such as dial-back for international LD. And it only took a few years for the J telcos to wake up to what they were not getting and alter their methods to at least keep them in the game.
Metered use is just an example of the free reign that domestic telcos have - they can dig into the client's pockets....so they will. Rather than build it so they will come, they cling to business models that are increasingly going out-of-date. And with no one to stop them, the domestic phone market will once again become a killing field of grand proportion, with the victim, as usual, being the consumer.
Re:Don't pick on Time Warner! (Score:4, Informative)
I've had Comcast in three different cities. They were great in one, and sucked unbelievably in the two others. I finally had to cancel where I am now because they couldn't get me a static-free picture or more than 128 kbps Internet. They sent 7 technicians out, none of whom were authorized to actually fix anything. I have Verizon FIOS now and I'm relatively happy, other than their pact with satan (i.e. MPAA / RIAA) and the three strikes policy.
Re:Don't pick on Time Warner! (Score:0, Informative)
What component of the infrastructure design prevents people from bypassing the ISP in one big ad-hoc network?
Backbones and local nodes.
I'll assume you drive a car, and are thus familiar with the interstate. If you are in spot A, and want to get your car to spot B 1000 miles away, the fastest route is along the interstate.
Backbones are the interstate of the internet, and the "local nodes" are the roads. Sure, you COULD pierce together an ad-hoc network of ethernet to PC to PC to PC... but that'd be like trying to have a shipping business that not only avoided the interstate, but didn't even get in a car.
Re:Don't pick on Time Warner! (Score:4, Informative)
A better analogy would be for GP to build his own on-ramp to the interstate, because the local roads and the only existing on-ramp are all owned by companies that demand a fee for their usage. ISPs do form part of the backbone, but they also plug into a central internet exchange.
The problem is that a private on-ramp simply costs too much for only a couple of users, so you'd need to band together to make it worthwhile. In effect, set up your own community ISP. You'd also need to come up with a good plan to hook up all the homes to the on-ramp though.
Re:Don't pick on Time Warner! (Score:1, Informative)
Comcast isn't bad when you have another provider offering similar service. They're certainly not great, but Comcast here in Denver is definitely tolerable.
Yep. Provided you call...
multiple random reboots of your CM in a single day
multiple random changes of your IP address over the course of a couple of days
DNS outages lasting hours at a time
Being unable to watch netflix online movies several nights in a row
Going roughly two weeks without a single 24-hour period in which service was uninterrupted
A price increase of $2 per month associated with a (forced) claimed increase in service but with no measurable change
"definitely tolerable".
Re:Don't pick on Time Warner! (Score:3, Informative)
DNS outages lasting hours at a time
The other complaints are more than valid, but OpenDNS [opendns.com] works very well for me, as an alternative to Comcast's DNS servers.