malium
join:2003-01-21
Kernersville, NC
| reply to soothsayer15
Re: Whine and Complain
A more relevant point mentioned elsewhere in a related thread though makes note of the constant scanning and probing of cable modem IPs by folks looking to abuse these, viruses, etc. A few years ago data lights on cable modes didn't blink constantly if you weren't active online, now they do - and this is surely being measured too.
The things that bother me about this are - one, RoadRunner does not price evenly across the US to all affiliates, it's set on a local level, so some places you get more or less bandwidth, pay more or less a month, or get more than one IP in a basic account. My letter said $15 for each 5 gigs over 15, and the 40 gig account was $99 not $79. Yes, it's a reasonable service, but if you are going to penalize people you should offer tools so they can monitor usage.
Also, as for bitching, who are you or anyone else to tell me what is reasonable? What was reasonable 4 years ago when I worked at RoadRunner is different now that AOL is pushing broadband content, now that movies are available online from legit sources, now that music can be downloaded legally from many sources. Remember that quote from Bill Gates about 64K being all a PC would ever need? My first PC had a 10 MEG hard drive. It's ironic that AOL wants to push more content to us but their company TWC wants to charge more if you use it. Hmmm. Guess you'll have to watch those movies on demand on digital cable instead. This isn't about abuse, it's about profit and tiered billing structures - the letter was a clear intimidation to get me to pay more or force me to a business class account. Or to moderate my internet usage.
Think banks and the way they nickel and dime you, making hundreds a year off the average account that lets them earn interest on your money. Think of the phone company billing by the minute or billing more to call 40 miles from here and it does for me to call Europe. People have every right to bitch and whine about a contract suddenly being changed on them. Imagine if your unlimited cell phone minutes suddenly changed to 100 minutes a month next month and charged you $1 a minute over that. A problem is that cable companies have virtual monopolies in most markets - you can't go elsewhere, and DSL isn't universally available to all locations served by cable. This is why the same company can and does price differently in different markets - and worse, the pricing is also often driven by collusion with your local city, town or county by franchise agreements with cable companies - guaranteeing them exclusive access to you as a customer, and your government probably skims profits (taxes or otherwise) off the price too. But with cable modems most of it falls outside the TV franchise deals and is pure profit for the cable company - the modem is paid off in a few months and the investments in the infrastructure are probably written off at a corporate level.
Yes, I've downloaded excessively, but until recent announcements the account was stated as unlimited internet access and now I'm told I can only use 1/10th of the level of service I used last month or pay extreme fines for extra traffic. It reminds me of the early web hosting models that made some ISPs rich off porn hosting when stolen passwords would skyrocket the gigs of traffic into thousands of dollars of excess hosting traffic and drive the sites out of business.
I'd be very curious what level of traffic would show on a test modem only connected to a PC with no traffic, but probed constantly as RoadRunner IP addresses are. Probably not over 15 gigs, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was gigs of unsolicited traffic a month.
Personally the letter was enough to make me quit RoadRunner and return the modem. AOL assured me there were no limits there even though it's on the same Time Warner pipes and my new modem came with no TOS from TWC. So I don't think the same as Earthlink users being bound by TWC matters on AOL, and I'm still waiting to hear if anyone on Earthlink got one of these letters from TWC. But the AOL client seems to need to be running on any PC to get online, even behind a router, which is annoying. I'd like to get a definitive answer as to whether TWC is threatening Earthlink users with the same fees, and whether Earthlink uses or requires a proprietary client and can work effective with a home LAN and router without custom software on each PC always logged in. |
