pandora
Premium
join:2001-06-01
Outland
 ·Comcast
|  Time warner to impose 5GB and 40GB caps on internet?
I just read a story about Time Warner experimenting with caps on internet usage. 5GB for a low tier user, and 40GB for a high tier user. $1 per GB per month for usage over the cap.
I just checked my monthly usage on another provider, and could fit under this cap with some room to spare. However, there could be many users who could be hit with hundreds of dollars a month in surcharges for going over cap. Is this fair?
Story at - »biz.yahoo.com/ap/080602/tec_time···tml?.v=4
Time Warner Cable starts customer trial with metered Internet access in Texas
NEW YORK (AP) -- You're used to paying extra if you use up your cell phone minutes, but will you be willing to pay extra if your home computer goes over its Internet allowance?
Time Warner Cable Inc. customers -- and, later, others -- may have to, if the company's test of metered Internet access is successful.
On Thursday, new Time Warner Cable Internet subscribers in Beaumont, Texas, will have monthly allowances for the amount of data they upload and download. Those who go over will be charged $1 per gigabyte, a Time Warner Cable executive told the Associated Press.
Metered billing is an attempt to deal fairly with Internet usage, which is very uneven among Time Warner Cable's subscribers, said Kevin Leddy, Time Warner Cable's executive vice president of advanced technology.
Just 5 percent of the company's subscribers take up half of the capacity on local cable lines, Leddy said. Other cable Internet service providers report a similar distribution.
"We think it's the fairest way to finance the needed investment in the infrastructure," Leddy said.
Metered usage is common overseas, and other U.S. cable providers are looking at ways to rein in heavy users. Most have download caps, but some keep the caps secret so as not to alarm the majority of users, who come nowhere close to the limits. Time Warner Cable appears to be the first major ISP to charge for going over the limit: Other companies warn, then suspend, those who go over.
Phone companies are less concerned about congestion and are unlikely to impose metered usage on DSL customers, because their networks are structured differently.
Time Warner Cable had said in January that it was planning to conduct the trial in Beaumont, but did not give any details. On Monday, Leddy said its tiers will range from $29.95 a month for relatively slow service at 768 kilobits per second and a 5-gigabyte monthly cap to $54.90 per month for fast downloads at 15 megabits per second and a 40-gigabyte cap. Those prices cover the Internet portion of subscription bundles that include video or phone services. Both downloads and uploads will count toward the monthly cap.
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"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use." |
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DCBradford
@rr.com | god i hope they dont do that |
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OB Kenobi
join:2005-05-29
Brooklyn, NY | reply to pandora
Screw you, TW. |
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NY11102
join:2008-02-27
Astoria, NY | reply to pandora
I will switch to Fios( as soon as is available in NYC) if TWC does that!
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Phil
Rojo Sol
Premium
join:2001-06-11
Camarillo, CA | I would switch to FiOS regardless if available. |
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martymefurst
join:2008-07-05
Albany, NY
| reply to pandora
Sure it's fair. A small minority of heavy users account for half of the resources, and therefore half of the very high cost of building, maintaining, and forever upgrading the network to meet their insatiable demands, yet their bills are the same? Metering beyond 40 gigs will affect very few people. |
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BurntCricket
Gotta Do What Ya Gotta Do
Premium
join:2000-09-02
Here
clubs:
·RoadRunner Cable
moderated:
July 5th, @06:19PM
| reply to pandora
This has been covered ever and over in this forum(and others) for a long time.
This trial is in ONE town in TX for NEW customers, they will know about these caps going in, there are no plans at this time to invoke any caps for others.
Will there be caps ? Sure, all providers will start them at some point.
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If you have to ask, you wouldn't understand. |
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MacLeech
The one and only
Premium,MVM
join:2001-07-14
SoCal
edit:
July 5th, @05:14PM
| reply to pandora
Currently, the bandwidth caps are a TRIAL in ONE AREA.
TWC runs lots of trials every year in different areas, this year HBO Downloads, DOCSIS 3, and Powerboost are new trials in different areas too. Some trials are expanded, like SDV, StartOver or CallerID on TV. While others never expand, like LilyPad or Roadrunner Video channel. While others die, like Pivot or Microsoft TV.
I could name a dozen things TWC trialed in the last few years that hardly anyone heard of and fewer actually were affected by.
BTW, this trial is not so much "caps", which imply a hard limit you CAN'T go over, as it is "metered usage" which is costs extra after a certain base amount is passed, similar to how water, electric, gas, and other utilities commonly bill for their products. The base amounts are on the low side compared to what OTHER companies have posted though...although I still wonder what percentage of customers this would ACTUALLY affect.
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Don't mind me, I'm just trying to help...
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pandora
Premium
join:2001-06-01
Outland
·Comcast
|  There has been discussion of caps not only for Comcast HSI and AT&T DSL, but also this for TWC. If you are concerned about caps interfering with growth of internet function, this may be of concern to you. If all you do is surf some pages, and so some email, then this really isn't a great concern.
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"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use." |
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pete411
@rr.com
| reply to pandora
Re: Time warner to impose 5GB and 40GB caps on internet?
yes it is bad idea if you play pc games need tons of updates for it and watch lots of youtube etc you can use lot more then 40 gigs why couldn't they set fair amount like comcast wanting to do 40 way to little the people who think 40 enough don't use internet that much. |
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ken225
join:2003-11-22
Brunswick, OH
| reply to pandora
Does anybody find it interesting that cable companies are starting to impose bandwidth restrictions just as companies like Netflix, Itunes, Hulu, etc are growing in popularity and starting to offer content for downloading? The cable companies have fought the notion of ala carte channels for years, so most of us pay lots of money per month for hundreds of channels when you probably don't watch more than 25% of them. Now, finally, we can purchase only the shows and content we want to and lo and behold, bandwidth restrictions start getting bandied about. The new Netflix box, the Apple TV, XBox 360 and others are starting to let us download content directly to our TVs. Think 40 gigs is a lot of bandwidth? How many HD movies do you think you'll be able to watch a month with that cap if you are downloading them?
I see these restrictions as an attempt to cut off the competition before they get a foothold. If you can't watch more than a few movies a month, you'll probably not going to bother. IMHO, the cable companies are just looking out for their primary business; getting us to purchase blocks of content for a reasonably high price. |
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Stacy
FotoDogue
Premium
join:2001-11-02
New York, NY
·RoadRunner Cable
 ·Speakeasy
| reply to pandora
I am sooo glad I didn't commit to a full year!
I've only been with Time Warner since March and in that time I've already had one major outage and now find myself paying extra for a usenet provider. If I find myself going above any sort of cap on usage I'll start shopping for a new provider. |
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Toby983
join:2004-10-01
edit:
July 21st, @06:28PM
| reply to pandora
With Mcleech again trying to obsfucate and strawman derail the real issue form harmless trails that TW does to the new coming BW metered usage - it hardly compares. Metered BW usage would only be viable if Time Warner gives a REAL BW link where one can easily check the usage per day, per week, per month IN detail just like cell phone user can check in detail their minute usages and text overages. Part of the reason for metered usage is a cover for them actually knowing in detail what each and every user DL's (in absolute clear detail) as possibly ordered by various agencies.
When it rolls out Nationwide, and it will, IMO it will initially roll out with the common user having no real way to measure their BW usage. When they lose about 12% of their base customers (not counting the newly locked-in-for a year customers) they will reluctantly give out a tool to check BW usage (IMO) and after some time (meaning after they get enough people locked in and at the same time start losing the savvy customers) they will likely offer extra bandwidth packages -- sort of like your checking account overdraft fee, probably an extra $10.00 fee to over a certain amount of BW overage, like you can exceed 40BG by 5GB-10GB but if you dare go over that your account could be in suspend mode or you get a flat $25.00 severe overage fee + by the GB. But what I see is them eventually losing enormous amounts of customers just like AOL did - and these are basically the same suits in the same backrooms that are doing this, and when this happens they will start to entice with even LOWER monthly fees then we have now BUT THE FINE PRINT will be so obsfucated and "catchy" that you dare make one mistake (and 80% of people will) and your cable bill will be 25-50% more on averages per year than it is now. |
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MacLeech
The one and only
Premium,MVM
join:2001-07-14
SoCal
edit:
July 21st, @08:07PM
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From the TWC Golden Triangle Select Plan web page |
said by Toby983  :Metered BW usage would only be viable if Time Warner gives a REAL BW link where one can easily check the usage per day, per week, per month... I'm not sure why you think it has to be detailed to the point of tracking individual downloads, but for those with the "Select" tier TWC has a bandwidth checking site for them: »selfcare.rr.com
It's an extension to the normal account management available to RR customers.
I haven't seen it specifically but more then likely it just tracks throughput on one of the modem interfaces or possibly from the CMTS side. Either way it's pretty easy for any ISP to do.
Actually tracking individual user FILE downloads/uploads is a serious resource hog, subject to all sorts of privacy law restrictions, and easily defeated by encryption... among other problems. Like this: »epic.org/privacy/cable_tv/ctpa.html or this: »www.datacenterknowledge.com/arch···ion.html
Hey, but don't let the facts get in the way of your "humble" opinion... |
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