Time Warner Boosts Broadband Customer Speed — But Only Near Google Fiber 203
An anonymous reader writes " Rob is a Time Warner Cable customer, and he's received two really interesting things from them lately. First, a 50% speed boost: they claim to have upgraded the speed of his home Internet connection. That's neat. Oh, and they've also cut his bill, from $45 to $30. Wow! What has prompted this amazing treatment? Years of loyalty and on-time payments? No, not exactly. Rob lives in Kansas City, pilot site for Google Fiber. Even though they have shut off people in other states for using too much bandwidth. Is Google making them show that it's not that hard to provide good service and bandwidth?"
Good (Score:5, Insightful)
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Healthy from whose perspective? Yours, mine and the rest of the consumer public? Certainly. But there's another side, a tragic side, of this you are not considering. Many dinners, golf games, gifts, donations and contributions were made to acquire the exlusive access to customers in an area which enabled them to maximize their executive bonuses, inflate their stock values and, when the time comes, fill their golden parachutes.
Now, thanks to this "healthy competition" the fruits of all that hard work is
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Google is "new media" the others are "old media." The old media has simply failed to adapt. Watch out for the new media... likely worse than the old media. For now, I applaud Google. Later, I will despise them.
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This is what healthy competition is supposed to do to the market.
Indeed it is. And this isn't even healthy competition -- this is just a small-n n-opoly in which one party has a personal interest in disproving the bandwidth whining and excuses by the others. If most places had a major ISP that didn't voluntarily participate in Six Strikes -- which would get them a massive share of the business in that region -- then I'd believe we had healthy competition.
We Need More Good Old Fashioned Competition (Score:2)
Google, please come to Poulsbo, WA and Ocean Springs, MS where the local cable monopolies (Comcast) and (CableOne) have a monopoly stranglehold on service and pricing. I'll switch in a heartbeat.
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It doesn't have to be Google Fiber. It is anyone to match the services. For me, I only have cable option for affordable broadband. No DSL (20K ft. to CO) and fiber. I had to use dial-up (3 KB/sec with lots of line noises even on 56k modems) yesterday morning due to a ten hours most of the city outage! :(
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
>This is an unsustainable race to the bottom.
Bullshit. It's been established that caps and rate limiting are just a cash grab. And the customer has been raped enough through billing ever since we threw billions of taxpayers' money at the network providers in the 90s only to watch it go out as dividends to shareholders and board bonuses.
Competition is *always* good.
--
BMO
Re:Good (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly, we already paid for these upgrades, but instead of doing them, the companies just pocketed it and claimed people were using too much and capped us.
They either need to do the upgrades or give back the tax money.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
They either need to do the upgrades or give back the tax money.
Could you imagine if the world worked like that? How awesome would that be? Unfortunately, their lobbying pockets are a bit deeper than yours or mine will ever be.
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Yea, cheaper to buy a few senators than upgrade the network.
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Could you imagine if the world worked like that? How awesome would that be? Unfortunately, their lobbying pockets are a bit deeper than yours or mine will ever be.
Weird. I read your idea and had this thought that we citizens should get together and "unionize" so we can have a stronger voice... and then I thought WTF? The government is SUPPOSED to be OUR "union".
My brain hurts. :(
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That, and to protect their market. Most ISPs are also TV providers, so low caps are just another way of protecting their TV market against Netflix and such.
Here in Montreal, it's either Bell or Videotron. Both are ISPs and TV providers. We get a low 60GB/Month of bandwith, which pretty much prevents anyone from ditching TV.
I would welcome something like Google Fiber...
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Even Australia with our massive submarine cables is better.
I pay $49 for a measly 500gig. $10 more if I wanted unlimited.
12Mbit only due to DSL and distance from the exchange but that is unavoidable with any ISP in Australia.
Plus my mobile only costs $15/month on top of that with the same company.
Re:Good (Score:5, Informative)
And that is why infrastructure is a government task (either direct or by government appointed company - which is how the POTS got rolled out and why it's available pretty much anywhere there is a public road), and everyone should be allowed to use that infrastructure at a fixed cost.
You want to run your car on a public road? You can do that, after you pay your vehicle taxes and get a driving license. You want to run a bus service? Sure, go ahead, just make sure you pay the vehicle taxes and have the proper licenses. Where those taxes are the same for everyone, and licenses are available for anyone who qualifies and passes certain exams. It's a level playing field.
I come from areas where data infrastructure is treated like that. Result? Excellent service at rock bottom price.
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This.
But I'll add something, forbid the government from owning (fully or partially) a company providing Internet services, or they will put anyone out of business using dirty tricks.
Re:Good (Score:4, Interesting)
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That's the problem. Some people say "NATIONALIZE IT!" Only problem is that historically when this happens the service tends to fall into disrepair while the prices go up.
Price controls are an even worse idea. I didn't live in the 70's, but my parents told me how horrible it was to get gas because there were always long lines at the pump, and you probably spent the amount saved on gas just moving your car through the line. When it went back to the free market, these problems went away.
I'm a very libertarian
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree so long as the government doesn't choose winners and losers like they have done and still currently do.
AT&T prior to the breakup is a good example of how far this cronyism can go. Don't get me started on the industrial media complex. Right now it is cellular carriers and cable companies. Both are using public resources unfairly.
Your public road analogy is good, but if you were to accurately compare it to the telecommunication industry there would be roads that only Ford, Chevy, and Crystler vehicles were allowed to drive on. Chevy would make and agreement with Ford to allow eachother's cars on their roads but not Toyota, KIA and many others. The barrier to entry would be so high that newer better cars would not be allowed in.
When Cox bought out our local Cable America in Phoenix all they did was switch subscribers over, and charge 20% more. Did they use any of the infrastructure of the competitor that they bought out? No, they systematically dismantled it. All of those years of negotiations with various municipalities to get access to easements, poles, alley ways, etc. all gone. The millions of dollars spent to install that mostly redundant infrastructure also gone. There is no possible way now, unless you are Google, to come in and compete with them.
Re:Good (Score:5, Interesting)
The funny part is that how much government is involved with a particular part of infrastructure is based directly on how old that kind of infrastructure is.
Roads, water/sewage, and postal service? Those date to at least the Roman Empire, so of course they're run directly by the government as a general rule. The Post Office is specifically enumerated in the U.S. Constitution, and "Postmaster General" used to be a cabinet level position.
Electricity? Heating gas? Ah, now we're only going back a little over a century, so we have heavily-regulated private companies providing the infrastructure.
Telephones? Less time still, with a commensurately less-regulated industry.
Cable TV? Even more recent, very little regulation. And, of course, residential Internet access is done on the incumbent phone and cable networks, so it ends up there on the spectrum.
Cell phone service? It's completely Wild West, with the government just divvying up spectrum. Is anyone surprised at predatory contracts and usurious rates and terrible service?
Here's the revelation: you go on that list in reverse order, newest and least regulated first, and I bet you're reading it from worst customer service to best. I've literally never had problems with my water utility, and rarely had problems with my electric service, but Comcast and Sprint? It is to laugh.
Apparently Going Postal Means Good Customer Servic (Score:2)
The fairness of price is certainly better as you move up the list, and the quality of service is much more consistent...but let's not delude ourselves into thinking the US postal service or the federal highway administration represent paragons of efficiency and polit
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It's not that they are paragons of efficiency and politeness. They clearly aren't. It's merely that the rest are worse. (Well, since the post office went private, they've gotten a lot worse...but there are plausible reasons why that don't have anything to do with going private. But it *sure* didn't get better. Not even briefly.)
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http://gigaom.com/2012/07/26/the-economics-of-google-fiber-and-what-it-means-for-u-s-broadband/
Analysts say $670 / customer to provide fiber-to-home. On a $40 plan, the break-even point is 1.6 years and on a $70, 9 months.
Add in a few extra additional expenses, and double it for kicks... 2-4 years to profitability, depending on the service amount.
Considering the copper / cable they used has been laid over 30 years ago, I think their* copper/cable lines have been well paid for and that some of that profit c
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep, look at the cost per Mbps for colo bandwidth versus last mile, they were on a roughly parallel trajectory until the media companies bought up the cable companies and decided to increase costs to protect their existing models, they can only do that because in most markets they have a monopoly/duopoly position, give them some real competition and suddenly things get back on track.
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Oh that is pretty funny. You seem to think that once the physical plant is in that is the end of the matter.
Well, there is this little thing called maintenance. If you don't maintain the physical plant, it goes to crap in a short period of time. Copper rusts. Coax deteriorates in other ways. Every connection point is a risk factor, and every box with some electronics in it is vulnerable to failure. Pretty much that means line crews are out at least five days a week and they need some coverage 24x7. T
Monopoly power (Score:2)
I think this is true, and that's why the state grants monopolies to utilities companies.
General
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ROFL.
So which one is going out of business? Time Warner or Google?
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I don't see why this is the case.
My ISP is small and can't afford to sell service at a loss. They serve only a limited area, but one where Comcast's service is no different than anywhere else. And yet this small company without large pockets can offer 200mbps symmetric service, though (*sob*) my building only has 100mbps installed (speed test result [speedtest.net]), for under $40/mo with no caps and no contracts. The only reason Comcast cannot offer similar service at a similar price is because they choose not to.
In rural
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The point is that Time Warner was FORCED to compete. That's what we as consumers need to encourage. Then and only then will we truly have "more choices". As citizens and as consumers we need to get government back into the business of making competition easier not harder. We need more "pro-competitive" politicians, who can then stand back and let truly "free" markets work.
It's called competetion (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's what happens in industries where mergers are unregulated. Good regulation preserves competition. No regulation kills competition as much as bad regulation.
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Loved the typo in your comment subject ("competetion"). I guess I got a new catch phrases from it: "Competition leads to competention". Much better than the grammatically correct but non-rhyming "competence". :-)
Competition is overrated (Score:5, Funny)
I mean, look, it lowers corporate revenue and increases operating expenses! Competition lowers tax revenue and taxes are how corporations support our troops. This competition thing has *got* to stop!
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It's a case of the under-regulated market not working.
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Old Comparison (Score:5, Insightful)
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That is because this happens still but it is old news and so is not reported anymore....
People get into car accidents every day you do not see it on the news anymore because it happens all the time ...
Yes, that is exactly what Google is doing. (Score:2)
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It would be great if Google is taking up the task really seriously, and becomes an infrastructure provider. Where anyone who wants can get access to that infrastructure, at fixed prices (level playing field). So that where-ever Google's network is available, you also have a dozen providers that can sell you an internet service.
The trickiest part may be the last mile, the actual connection to the end user's home.
Cancelled today (Score:5, Interesting)
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What did you switch to using?
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(In other words, even if that is technically true, one is an ugly, messed up version of the other and only a fool would choose it given an option. Unfortunately, Uverse and FiOS coverage areas appear to be mutually exclusive.)
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I live in Cary. Canceled my service because they wouldn't give me a new subscriber rate on their own channels. First month after they sent me a letter, half the original price, more bandwidth, for one year. I had already switched to Uverse (which is shitty in my neighborhood unfortunately) so I didn't take it. The next month, as I as getting fed up with Uverse, I get a second letter. Sign back up and for $60/month will give you cable and Internet (second from the top tier) for 2 years.
I switched back.
I
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They are petrified of Netflix. I got a lower rate than he did for the same exact service because I wanted to retain the iternet and drop the cable subscription, saying I don't watch TV enough and will use Netflix. My total bill is $55. I think they do this because while I don't watch much TV, it ups their subscriber number for advertising negotiations, and gives them an avenue to make a little money off me in on demand movies.
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They will do the promotion thing even if they have no competition. It is in their best interest to keep you as a customer even if they're not making as much as they usually can, so they will keep throwing you bones until your service is mega cheap...for a year. Then you have to do it all over again.
Not just Google. (Score:5, Interesting)
I had my Time Warner Cable bandwidth increased without asking about a month ago here in Cincinnati because of competition from Cincinnati Bell laying down their fiber service all over town. That being said, if I could kick Time Warner to the curb and get Cincinnati Bell's Fioptics service where I live, I would in about three shakes of a lamb's tail.
This isn't only happening where Google is doing their fiber experimentation.
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No, but it is only happening where TW has competition. I have no other option for high-speed Internet. I live too far from the DSLAM for DSL. TW has raised my rates from $35/mo to $56/mo in the last decade without any increase in speed or reliability.
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Yeah, it was also happening anywhere that Fios was being installed, unfortunately Verizon has basically halted that project and sold off most of their landline holdings outside the densely packed east coast to Frontier which will never roll out another yard of Fios.
if Google comes to Austin I'll drop my isp quick (Score:2)
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Bandwidth is cheap, cheap, cheap (Score:2)
Most people have been sold a bill of goods.
Bandwidth is cheap. Very, very cheap. Getting cheaper all the time. Once it's fiber to the home, the rest is all done. Top tier providers get bandwidth so cheap it's almost free.
It should be a national embarassment there's not gigabit infrastructure everywhere. Props to Google for helping out the shame.. and may they eat the lunch of all the incumbents.
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You are overstating the case.
That said, I basically agree with you. The anti-comettition nature of governmental rulings should be a MAJOR embarassment. I have a harder time blaming the corporations for using the unjust regulations to extract money. What I blame them for is corrupting the government and the regulators.
OTOH, bandwidth over long distances isn't cheap. Not if you want it to be at all reliable. I don't know what a reasonable cost would be, and in a state authorized monopoly (well...not *exa
I didn't realize Google Fiber was near Los Angeles (Score:2)
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Does this mean that Time Warner is terrified that Los Angeles is next on the list to get Google Fiber?
Is there any other competition coming or recently arrived there?
(As an irrelevant but amusing aside, Chrome thinks "Los Angeles" is spelled wrong, but "LA" and "L.A." are not.)
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They're rolling out those changes wherever they fear competition. For us, it was the nearby Verizon FiOS install that caused TW to change.
For ALL TWC customers not just near google fiber (Score:2)
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This is a story from last month (Dec 12 2012), and it's for all TWC customers.
What about the price cut? I didn't see a mention in the yahoo story, have you seen anything about that? Is it nationwide, too?
Competing with Verizon FIOS up here in NY (Score:4, Interesting)
Its amazing. For the past 10 years TW has been steadily increasing rates, "confusing" their billing (Oh, sorry sir for the $12/mo mistake for the past 3 years that was hidden in your "bundle"), and their service of ALL types has been getting crappier and crappier. To the point where I was ready to just ditch them all together and do ANY thing else.
Crappy cable box problems. Internet outages. S L O W internet (at times) and OK others. Finally FIOS came around here about a year ago, and several people I know switched. Initially they had some technical issues but nothing really bad, and NO one I know including myself has had any issues at all in the past year.
I called TW 4 times, and got all the way to a management type 3 of those times, to ask about a billing situation after our bill went up $60 a month. For no reason. They were NOT interested in fixing the situation and retaining me at ALL. In fact, the last words they told me, when I said I prefered to stay with them but was going to just go to FIOS if they couldnt fix it, were "Well, you have to do what you have to do". From a manager.
When I turned in my boxes, the girl said "wow, you have been a customer a LONG time, why are you leaving?" I told her, she just rolled her eyes and apologized and said "Thats typical (of the TW customer support folks)".
Now TW is running these commercials on the radio around here 24/7 trying to get people to "come back". "See the difference" "Your money back if you are not satisfied" etc. Too funny really. As long as VZ - another HUGE company - keeps their customer service and value where they are now, Im staying. For sure.
Competition is a GREAT thing....
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Man they stopped laying fios near Albany NY awhile back. Stinks, I'm about 10mile south of Albany and I think they stopped laying the west side of Albany. I'll probably never see competition for TWC for internetz.
how such low prices? (Score:5, Interesting)
So I live in Overland Park, a suburb of Kansas City. Google fiber is not in offered in Overland Park yet, but because it is close by and spreading I checked out the prices and signed up for email notification when their service becomes available in my area.
The prices. Holy cow. It's free. A one time $300.00 installation fee but then it is free. So I was wondering for months how is that possible? Is Google taking a massive loss? Did Google invent a new technology which allows them to undercut their competitors?
Then on a drive across town to the local Fablab I was listening to the local public radio station which just happened to be interviewing Susan Crawford, author of the recently published book Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age. As the summary at Amazon [amazon.com] states:
Well as you might guess from the subtitle of the book, what she finds out when she explores is that internet and cable service in the U.S. are regional monopolies. Even when multiple internet and cable service providers operate in the same city they divide up the city into regions of monopolistic coverage and only overlap on small percentages of territory.
So Google offers such spectacularly low prices by undercutting monopolists, having enough clout to overcome barriers to entry which block startups, and Moore's law has reduced the cost of providing internet service to something pretty close to free. The inflated prices for internet broadband service which we have paid in the U.S. have not followed Moore's law [technologyreview.com] because service provider are monopolies. Now with the disruption of that monopoly in one regional market prices are back on track with Moore's law there.
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The question to ask is since it is proven that people will pay $30-60 a month for Internet service, why would Google offer it for free? Just to build market share? I doubt it.
Google is getting compensated in some manner. Now the first thing that comes to mind is they are avoiding paying someone else to deliver their exclusive content - plenty of places are waking up to the fact that Google is making billions off of delivering ads to people with the local cable company picking up the tab for the delivery
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The question to ask is since it is proven that people will pay $30-60 a month for Internet service, why would Google offer it for free? Just to build market share? I doubt it.
The one-time charge for "lifetime" service gets you the lowest tier data service Google is offering. There are other monthly-billed packages with higher bandwidth and bundled TV service, too. Google's looking to wire -- fiber? -- entire neighborhoods at a time, rather than one house here, one house there all over town. Your neighborhood ("fiberhood," as Google calls it) gets on the list only if they have enough commitment from residents.
No, they are demonstrating that competiton works. (Score:2)
So get your government to allow it. I have multipair cables (as well as fiber) belonging to two different telecoms crossing my property but the state will allow only one to offer me service. Your cable company has a "franchise" (i.e., monopoly) that they purchased from your local government.
Hardly unexpected (Score:2)
I'm in KC and when "lower end" fiber services in the 24 Mbps range started appearing, so many people started flocking to them that the entrenched service provider started offering better deals. Of course, this didn't happen until they were hammered with defections.
Same old story (Score:2)
Here in my small town, the locally-owned cable company ran fiber and whatever else they needs back in 1997, ready to plug in the equipment and throw a switch for broadband.
Then Charter bought them out.
Since Ameritech wasn't offering anything beyond expensive ISDN, Charter didn't feel the need to enable broadband for 4 years. Likewise... Ameritech didn't feel the need to upgrade to DSL. It was a stalemate of stubborn stupidity, with the residents of our town being the victims.
Local utilities commissions need
Only Good Thing About the Free Market (Score:2)
This is actually the only good thing that justifies the free market. Not the right for someone to make money. It's the fact that competition reduces prices and improves quality to consumers. (This used to be common knowledge in circa 1970's-80's, but many free-market defenders nowadays don't even pretend it's supposed to be good for anyone except the profiteers.)
That said, it only works for products and services for which (a) you have a choice, (b) you have quality information about the prices and benefits,
They did this to me too (Score:2)
this is trying to drive the huns from the homeland (Score:2)
TW is trying to underprice Google in hopes of driving them from the market. classic reaction. I have heard from a local telco exec that their strategy if somebody overlays the fiber and service they run to homes with, they will undercut whatever competitive price by a buck for a year beyond what the other guys do, and will knock on every single door in the area with installation within 2 hours.
of course! (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course they're doing it because of Google.
Where I grew up, we were close to a military base. The town allowed a cable company to have a monopoly. The base didn't, and had competing cable companies. Guess who got much lower prices and a broader selection of channels? Thankfully, the town council at least had enough sense to notice that the base was getting better deals, and to apply pressure to the cable company each time their monopoly came up for renewal. Thus, while they didn't have quite as good prices and selection as the base, my parents still get better prices and selection than I do, even though I now live in a city with about five times the population.
Competition does wonderful things to markets.
Same Here (Score:4, Informative)
I'm less concerned than I thought I would be (Score:2)
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They're all the same. Scumbags and assholes. But I can do without all the garbage that makes up TV... so aside from cable Internet if for whatever reason I have to switch back from DSL, I will likely have to deal with the cell phone companies before the cable companies. And even then, I'd likely get satellite TV if I absolutely must have TV; problem is, their "package" deals are designed to screw you in the same way as cable's, so again, I'd more likely just avoid TV as I have for years.
I really don't kn
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Says someone who doesn't live where they are rolling out fiber.
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"Where do you live that you have no choice of cell carriers?"
It's not a lack of choice of cell carriers, it's having a cell phone means having to deal with a cell phone carrier, which is sort of like having your choice of slow, painful, fatal diseases. You still die before your time and do so slowly and painfully.
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Only in the east. Shaw doesn't run cell phones. They had plans to and bought some AWS spectrum, but they've apparently decided against that and recently sold the spectrum off to Rogers.
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Which is absolute shit, at least now. Shaw is a member of the Netflix SuperHD program, which means they have (or otherwise directly hook into) a Netflix appliance on their network, so they don't pay any transit fees for netflix data now. If they're complaining about Netflix users "taking all the bandwidth" then it's because they've oversold their network.
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Some people care about ppv.
The rest knows about the existence of The Pirate Bay.
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I may know about the existence of Pirate Bay, but I decline to use their wares. Their ethics may be higher than those of the MPAA, but that's an extremely low bar.
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Pirate Bay does not work for live sports / events and stuff like NHL game center live has a poor frame rate
Conversely, cable TV is becoming a niche for viewing live sports broadcasts.
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Excuse me, but have you tried a Roku box? Or Apple TV? You can subscribe to services for live sporting events without having cable TV.
Unfortunately, it isn't free, but I'm sure someone is figuring out a way to pirate those services.
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Re:I got that message too (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, I got that message a while back. They claim a 50% boost, but I haven't seen it. Even after resetting the modem and router, everything seems to download at about the same speed as before. I suspect BS (hardly atypical for Time Warner).
Since you don't list what kind of router you have, what kind of firewall rule processing it's doing, and if you're using wireless it's hard to tell who the weakest link is.
I never use a ISP integrated modem/router(/wireless gack), too many of them suck and lock out too many options. If a regular router you can stick your own server on the WAN port and run something like http://www.speedtest.net/mini.php [speedtest.net] , across the LAN you should see 100Mbps (or more if it's Gb the entire way). If it's slower then 100Mb on wired your routers performance sucks. Test wired first then add your WLAN in, I have seen many wireless setups that where showing a 150Mbps (good) connection not even perform 30Mbps transfers.
Even more advanced tests would be to try to run 2 speed tests locally at the same time. Most equipment will starve one stream (one 99Mbps/one 1Mbps), some equipment will give bad jitter and the total speed will be less then 75% of line speed, and latency will be high, and very rarely the equipment will have decent queuing and the two streams will be close to even at around 95% of total line speed and latency will be decent.
Actually getting 20Mbps+ from the random internet host is not very common. Testing a close, fast host inside the TW network is the best way to tell. This might help.
http://www.timewarnercable.com/en/residential-home/support/speed-test.html/ [timewarnercable.com]
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Nationwide? I live in San Diego, and I got no such notice or automatic increase from Time Warner.
I suspect you're full of shit.
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I searched the internet, but I couldn't find any news of a Comcast speed increase from this year. Did you just make this up?
I suspect that by "all customers," the first AC meant "all customers of TW," not "all customers of any ISP".
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I would generally agree with you but also don't toss the baby out with the bath water.
Government's grant monopolies all the time -- usually for essential services. i.e. The Government has a monopoly on how the country is run.
Standards are a good thing. It is only when they are abused (and I'll agree that monopolies tend to be abused) is when the problem starts.
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Really with TWC would get its act together regarding upload. Everyone I know in other services gets at least 4 megabits. I used to get about that too, but one day years ago I was dropped like a sack of shit down to under 1.
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Probably not. Like so many of these ideologues, he is just a one trick pony.
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Because noticing the increase in 'market value' of the people you employ is, I don't know, a standard part of business operating procedures? Because people aren't serfs? They aren't tied to the land, so to speak, and if they are treated ill, they can leave (and not return)?
The market, when functioning properly, is neither pro-employee nor pro-employer. It will, in general, match up, in the job market, the best employee with the best employer. That's when it's functioning properly. When it isn't, chaos rules
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Bob, your problem here, as always, is that cable companies do not operate in a free market: they're regional monopolies, not by market forces, but because your local politicians / committees voted, into law, that these particular companies would receive special treatment in return for certain considerations. They have rights of ways, special low rates / taxes, etc. and whatever, for the thousandeth time, that their competitors do not get, and have trouble competing against. That's about as free market as bl