Time Warner Cable: No Consumer Demand For Gigabit Internet 573
Freshly Exhumed writes "Chris Welch at The Verge tells us: 'Speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference moments ago, Time Warner Cable's Chief Financial Officer Irene Esteves seemed dismissive of the impact Google Fiber is having on consumers. "We're in the business of delivering what consumers want, and to stay a little ahead of what we think they will want," she said when asked about the breakneck internet speeds delivered by Google's young Kansas City network. "We just don't see the need of delivering that to consumers."' The article goes on to quote her: '...residential customers have thus far shown little interest in TWC's top internet tiers. "A very small fraction of our customer base" ultimately choose those options.'"
How about the price? (Score:5, Informative)
How about the price?
in rotterdam you can get 200 mbit for 30 euro's, 600 mbit for 37 euro's and 1Gbit for a few hundred euro's more...
I love to have 1Gbit, but I guess 600mbit is okay for now, well hell I would be happy if I could get 200 mbit at all...
It's just how much people are willing to pay for it. I think it still costs far too much....
too expensive (Score:4, Informative)
" The article goes on to quote her: '...residential customers have thus far shown little interest in TWC's top internet tiers"
Ya. Cause you charge too damn much for it. You priced it out of reach of most people. It's not that there isn't demand for it.
No competition = slow speeds (Score:5, Informative)
"We just don't see the need of delivering that to consumers."' The article goes on to quote her: '...residential customers have thus far shown little interest in TWC's top internet tiers. "A very small fraction of our customer base" ultimately choose those options.'"
Translation: "We have a near monopoly and don't want to spend the money to do the upgrade because we don't have to"
I pay for 50Mb/s access and my ISP offers 100Mb/s. Why don't I pick 100Mb/s? Because it costs $200/month versus the $80/month I'm already paying. Huge diminishing returns. The expensive bit is running the cable to my house. After any arguments against offering the fastest possible speed for a reasonable price are pretty weak.
Pfft. (Score:4, Informative)
Of COURSE they're going to say this.
Invest millions or billions into infrastructure? Why would they want to do something like that when they can just sit back and milk profits on what they have now?
The thing is, there IS a call for this kind of connection. But not when:
A: They want to charge $200 for a 50 megabit connections as-is.
B: They're capping data either way.
C: They're forcing you to pay even MORE by bundling their TV and phone service in. Look at the prices for their bundles. Now try to find the prices for the stand-alone internet.
D: Their customer and technical service is, even at it's most kindly-description, shit-tastic.
With the kind of pricing scheme they have now, they'd want $500-600/month MINIMUM for gig service.
At that kind of price point, yeah. There's no demand. Nobody's stupid enough to pay that.
Re:I can think of a few rea$on$ (Score:5, Informative)
The article goes on to quote her: '...residential customers have thus far shown little interest in TWC's top internet tiers. "A very small fraction of our customer base" ultimately choose those options.'"
Um, yeah - that's because it's waaaaaaaay overpriced.
I think $20 more per month is a fair price for any extra 1mb, and with the top tier at 35mb its faster than any consumer will ever need! I love my triple lock-in play!
Meh, here in Finland I pay 29e/month for this [imgur.com] (uncapped) and I live in a town of 10k people. If they tried to raise their prices they'd lose my business to any of the 4 competing ISP's.
Re:I can think of a few rea$on$ (Score:5, Informative)
my sarcasometer is out for repair, so I'm unsure if serious... but I *am* a TWC customer, and I pay for their top residential tier, because I require it for my home business (IT consulting). It's stupid expensive for the upload speeds that I'm offered, which is really what I need the top tier for. I most certainly *am* their target audience, I get no less than two pieces of physical mail per month asking me to go for their TV and phone bundle. They LOVE the fact that they can charge me as much as they do, because I have no viable alternative right now, at least not until I can move to the next town over (Verizon FiOS) or into an office with a fiber provider. The woes of living in the 'burbs.
Re:Translation: We Don't Have Gigabit Fiber (Score:5, Informative)
In my case, it is because although down speed is higher, up speed and latency are no better.
Re:Not at $500/month. (Score:4, Informative)
well, capitalism without competition isn't actually capitalism, it's more like feudalism, so don't feel bad for knocking the idea of a monopoly around... the concept of cable monopolies is going to have to be reexamined eventually. They did it with the phone companies where you have "last mile" providers and backbone providers - I think eventually cable operators will be relegated to "last mile" status, and you'll be able to push other providers' services down the same pipe over time, just like you can get DSL from multiple providers over the same copper pair. Probably take 5-10 years, though.
(this is admittedly an oversimplification of the situation, but the basic idea is that the monopolies either need to be broken, or coax cable needs to be replaced with something more carrier neutral like utility fiber to the neighborhood.)
Re:Translation: We Don't Have Gigabit Fiber (Score:5, Informative)
It seems to vary widely by region; in Upstate NY, our basic service is 5mb down, 1mb up and costs $55 monthly after all of the first year deals fall away.
I'd love gigabit service, but at their current pricing model up here, $11,000 a month is a bit steep.
Re:Translation: We Don't Have Gigabit Fiber (Score:4, Informative)
Who cares about theoreticals?
TWC has lower bandwidth, higher price, AND caps.
Google has higher bandwidth, lower price and NO caps.
Stockholm, Sweden (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Is TWC still capping bandwidth? (Score:4, Informative)
Right - if your gigabit connection is capped at something like 30GB, then you could only back up a quarter of your TB HD every month
Actually, you could only back up (30/1024)*100% = ~3% of your TB HD every month.
Re:Translation: We Don't Have Gigabit Fiber (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Translation: We Don't Have Gigabit Fiber (Score:3, Informative)
Caps are evil, vile, dishonest and crooked.
Caps in Canada serve two purposes:
1. Discourage people from watching TV/Movies from "Over The Top Carriers" such as netflix and push customers towards the cable company's PPV products and cable packages (and I won't go into "alternative" sources of content). This is especially nefarious as the largest ISPs are owned by large media companies that own the distribution rights for lots of content, television stations and cable/telecom distribution plants. Example: Tech savvy Canadians have been watching the TV Series "Homeland" for the last few years. Only this year is the first season coming onto Cable TV as someone finally purchased the rights to broadcast it in Canada. Part (Most?) of the blame for this is Canadian ownership requirements for telecommunications and broadcast companies. All of these companies must be owned in majority by Canadians.
2. Cover up the fact that the incumbent carriers have not been upgrading their network to match demand. They force the caps so people won't use the full capabilities of their internet connection. If everyone did use their internet connections to the fullest, the ISP would not be able to deliver on those services.