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.
View: Full Article @ Associated Press
and when everyone gets used to it... someone will come up with unlimited plan again and they all will follow as well
and when everyone gets used to it... someone will come up with unlimited plan again and they all will follow as well
For more than you are paying now no doubt.
What I like to do is set a bear trap in my backyard, then call Time Warner to send out a tech to look at the line. I've got a trophy room with a dozen Time Warner techs mounted on the wall. Even caught a couple of level 3 techs.
Another thing I like to do is tell them my cable box is in the basement and lead them down there in the dark. Little do they know that I keep my alligator pit there.
**** the cable companies. Not only are they lying about running out of capacity, they should drop prices.
This is what lack of competition does every time. The FCC handed our ***es over to the cable companies in the 1980s and this is the result. Consumers have no choice!
I'm going to go call Time Warner, I think there's trouble with my line...
And they say the DVD format is dead, because people will download films etc. instead - What utter rot!
Indeed. Though now all bur forgotten Prodigy (the service, not the band) had the largest share of users until they went hourly. The service was very slow, so users dropped it. If ISP move to hourly, what would stop them from slowing the bandwidth to get us to use more hours to get the same action accomplished?
People who use hundreds of gigabytes a month should pay more if you ask me.
People who use hundreds of gigabytes a month should pay more if you ask me.
Completely agree. I'm not sure how people even manage it, judging on my own (fairly heavy) usage.
Boycott the Internet? Dare to dream.
How hard is it to figure out $40 a month + overages + any other fee they can tack on = $$$$$$$$
Still cheap, if you compare it to Indian ISPs who charge like 1$/40mb. :|
Internet should be free to begin with and no one should be without it. It allows all of us to be connected to each other and its just money grabbing executives trying to milk the consumer for all its worth. It should be that you pay for the hardware and then pay a little service free for maintaining the internet like 10 dollars, and it should give you 100Gbps down/up with no limit.
But alas, for where there is money to be made, people will exploit it
Neztea
And yet they're still making billions in profits. Its no different than when companies outsource their workers to where they are paid next to nothing just to make their profits higher at the expense of the American people who lose their jobs.
You'd rather have Time Warner losing more money which would lead to people losing their jobs and even more outsourcing? You can't have it both ways. Regardless of utopian, socialist ideals Time Warner is a business and needs profits to stay running. Without profits, millions would be out of work.
But alas, for where there is money to be made, people will exploit it
Neztea
And how do you plan on connecting? someone has to "own" the access points to the internet, please don't tell me you thing the Government can do that and do it right
You're arguement is flawed with the fact that they already provide this, unlimited use and STILL MAKE A HUGE PROFIT !!!
Justify the cost increase to the consumer when speed is not increasing, service is the same, and you're limiting use.
A server costs the same to maintain whether you have traffic going through it or not.
You're argument is flawed with the fact that they already provide this, unlimited use and STILL MAKE A HUGE PROFIT !!!
Justify the cost increase to the consumer when speed is not increasing, service is the same, and you're limiting use.
A server costs the same to maintain whether you have traffic going through it or not.
owned.
If you RTFA, Time Warner states the increase is to fund infrastructure upgrades, which will increase speeds and service. Upgrades that are seriously needed, our tech infrastructure is seriously behind the rest of the technologic world.
If you RTFA, Time Warner states the increase is to fund infrastructure upgrades, which will increase speeds and service. Upgrades that are seriously needed, our tech infrastructure is seriously behind the rest of the technologic world.
Time Warner is a horrible company to deal with here in the midwest, their tech support is the worst I've ever experienced and their lines have needed upgrading since 1975 in many areas.
They charge more and more each year while performing ZERO upgrades, none, zip, now with this latest fleecing scheme they will rack in even more money while the consumers get less and less of their moneys worth.
*IF* they are worried about bandwidth hogs then they can simply cap their lines, if a user is a continual hog then cap their lines to a lower speed, it's not rocket science, don't fleece the rest of the users for it, it's just another excuse to screw the consumer.
Time Warner is a company in dire need of being put out of business by a competitor.
Everything should be "free" then according to those standards.
yeah, $1/1GB isnt bad, until you start downloading game demos and movie trailers... ie: legal stuff.
slowly tightening control of the internet... little by little so people can get used to it.
But of course. Technology will always upgrade and revolutionize in the way we are transferring information from another. Yes, There are hardware limitations to the amount of data we can transfer, but that is slowly being changed (Cables -> Fiber optics -> -maybe the use of quantum mechanics-) in some select regions so far, but what if we could spread that technology to every single person, and then they could get the hardware, and then they could pay a small percentage of their earnings to maintaining the service in that area (like 0.10 dollars if it is in a region where they make 4 dollars a day or something).
I'm going to make an example of this. In India, they have a huge population boom in which they're reaching an excess of over 1 billion people. Now, if everyone in that country could pay at least 0.10 cents thats 10,000,000 dollars for the sole purpose of maintaining the internet and the hardware (fiber optic cabling and whatnot). And that is for India, which mind you, in which not everyone is wealthy.
Now if we do the same for Canada for example, we have a population of 30 million, now, if we ask them to pay 10 dollars (which Canadians can afford) that would be 300 million solely on maintaining the internet and cover the costs of cabling with fiber optics.
Of course, this is all just theory. of course not everyone is going to have a computer to hook up the internet and not everyone is very interested in the internet. But I'm just saying hypothetically that if we did live in a perfect Utopian society in which everyone had everything, this could be a viable system in which internet should be handled.
besides... isn't putting a price on the amount of data you can transfer a bit discriminatory to the Wealthy?
Now if we do the same for Canada for example, we have a population of 30 million, now, if we ask them to pay 10 dollars (which Canadians can afford) that would be 300 million solely on maintaining the internet and cover the costs of cabling with fiber optics.
That won't go very far!
But of course. Technology will always upgrade and revolutionize in the way we are transferring information from another. Yes, There are hardware limitations to the amount of data we can transfer, but that is slowly being changed (Cables -> Fiber optics -> -maybe the use of quantum mechanics-) in some select regions so far, but what if we could spread that technology to every single person, and then they could get the hardware, and then they could pay a small percentage of their earnings to maintaining the service in that area (like 0.10 dollars if it is in a region where they make 4 dollars a day or something).
I'm going to make an example of this. In India, they have a huge population boom in which they're reaching an excess of over 1 billion people. Now, if everyone in that country could pay at least 0.10 cents thats 10,000,000 dollars for the sole purpose of maintaining the internet and the hardware (fiber optic cabling and whatnot). And that is for India, which mind you, in which not everyone is wealthy.
Now if we do the same for Canada for example, we have a population of 30 million, now, if we ask them to pay 10 dollars (which Canadians can afford) that would be 300 million solely on maintaining the internet and cover the costs of cabling with fiber optics.
Of course, this is all just theory. of course not everyone is going to have a computer to hook up the internet and not everyone is very interested in the internet. But I'm just saying hypothetically that if we did live in a perfect Utopian society in which everyone had everything, this could be a viable system in which internet should be handled.
besides... isn't putting a price on the amount of data you can transfer a bit discriminatory to the Wealthy?
I can tell you've never seen the prices for that equipment, 300 mil will go mighty quick. Worked at a Telecom's warehouse, just a simple interface card cost in the 10,00 range, and that was for non fiber connections, the price list for the fiber stuff was mind boggling, a medium sized pallet of equipment could easily be worth 4=5 mil, and we shipped out 20-30 a day, and this was for a private regional company doing installs for businesses internal networks and WAN connections, not internet which would have required more expensive hardware for the setups
No, it's the people in office that are bribed and "influenced" by corporations. Our government is pretty corrupt tbh.
"You'll be missed!"
When a Business screws you over you actually have options here to deal with it, when the Government screws you over that politician somehow gets reelected by the morons in his district, even if it harms the same morons that keep reelecting him/her
Cool, then I have nothing to worry about.
Yes a lot of people will be angry about the limits. Now those college students in Texas can say goodbye to Halo 3
Neztea
They started with packages that had limits e.g. 3GB/month and above that you had to pay extra.
From that model they moved on to 'fair use'. So there was a limit but you didn't know.
Later on they moved on to 'unlimited'
I moved from the Netherlands to the United States last month where the infrastructure is obviously a lot poorer. And it has nothing to do with population density since I live in Manhattan. Max speed is uncomparable to the Netherlands, neither are the prices.
Looks like, instead of upgrading the infrastructure they decided to downgrade their customers. And the reason why they can do it is simple: Lack of competition. While you have I-don't-know-how-many ISPs in NL where you can get broadband connection (a country of 17 million people), here I have two choices: cable and ADSL from the local telephone company.
They started with packages that had limits e.g. 3GB/month and above that you had to pay extra.
From that model they moved on to 'fair use'. So there was a limit but you didn't know.
Later on they moved on to 'unlimited'
I moved from the Netherlands to the United States last month where the infrastructure is obviously a lot poorer. And it has nothing to do with population density since I live in Manhattan. Max speed is uncomparable to the Netherlands, neither are the prices.
Looks like, instead of upgrading the infrastructure they decided to downgrade their customers. And the reason why they can do it is simple: Lack of competition. While you have I-don't-know-how-many ISPs in NL where you can get broadband connection (a country of 17 million people), here I have two choices: cable and ADSL from the local telephone company.
Pretty much hits the nail on it's head
And the sad part is that they could give us now Euro/Japan speeds IF they wanted to but claim it costs too much even if they already have the equipment to do it installed
The is a slight difference; the United States is pretty big compared to most countries around the world. So many places offer DSL (or at least sat) as their high speed, and you can get this in the mountains or on your farm in Nebraska. There's a whole lot of area to cover, so it's somewhat understandable that it's not as fast as it could be in most places. However, here in Sacramento.... you can get Sure West fiber optic. They offer 50 meg access, down to 5 meg, and it's about the same price as Comcast or AT&T's best speed.
There's so many things I love about the US. The technology infrastructure is not one of them.
k for your appeasement
Die in a fire, Time Warner Cable/Road Runner
this charging by the gb is a very bad idea if we are moving toward a digital home.
Gas, Water and power are finite resources and having fixed tarrifs is a measure of control to slow down the use of this resource. The ISP's are providing a pipe, but no content. They don't provide anything other than a data connection. That data does not come from them. A high-end Cisco router that has a capacity of say 100gbps does NOT cost twice the amount that a 50Gbps does - so why the caps?
There are no bigger costs associated with me downloading 10Gb or 100Gb a month. It may cost the ISP more in terms of switches, routers and peering but there is no reason why this cannot be built into a £20, £30 or even £40 a month subscription. The fact is that the ISP's have been basing their "all-you-can-eat" packages on the average data downloaded per consumer back in 2004/2005. However with the advent of High Def, YouTube, BitTorrent, BBC iPlayer, 4OD, more remote workers and ever increasing interest from consumers into the high-tech arena (drivers, updates, researching, blogging etc.) the average person is using more of the pipe than they did.
Just because the roads are getting more congested doesn't mean I should pay more road tax. More cars = more tax payers = more cash that should be invested back into expansion. The same should be applied to internet connectivity - more subscribers (and there has been a steady increase in the last 10 years that nobody can deny!
As the ISP's have been lead by the marketing departments rather than the network operations centre there has been such a low subscription rate whilst keeping shareholders happy that there has been no cash to continually expand and increase the network capacity. Instead we are all expected to pay more to make up for the lack of foresight on the ISP's management.
Regardless if it has a direct impact on me or not is neither hear nor there - it's the principle that the ISP's want more of our cash for the lack of investment in the past 5 years which is due to a poor business model and lack of proactive capacity-based growth.
Actually, data is finite. Go back to the old analogy that the internet is a series of pipes/tubes, like water. But made of fiber and copper. Lets say you have 100 people downloading at 1mbs per second... you need a 100mb pipe so they can get the full bandwidth. And increasingly larger pipes for more people. The "costs" come from the hardware and support of that hardware.
Same thing with your water pipes at home. They only so big. Lets say you run two showers and your dishwasher, your water pressure goes down. Also, do you expect the city to provide you a Brita water filter on each of your sinks to filter out the bad taste in the water, they just make it drinkable. The same with internet providers. AV, spam filtering is YOUR responsibility, so either do it yourself or pay someone to do it for you.
There are many other costs your not thinking about.. i.e. electricity. With the costs of oil and other forms of power increasing no doubt the service providers are seeing problems with this additional cost too.
I could keep going on, but I won't. I don't necessarily agree with them moving to a pay per MB use.. But then again isn't everyone saying that the Cable companies should do this with their tv stations, with ala carte? Pay for the channels they use?
You pay about 25 € and you have a 4 GB limit international and unlimited national.
Note that almost all websites are internacional in Portugal.
Is it $1 a gigaBYTE or gigaBIT? Something tells me it is gigaBIT despite what the article says.
OHhh how great is live in honduras my isp "experts" don't know how to meter my internet and im happy with that
Pathetic. I think they might be able to justify the $1 per extra gigabyte provided that they had between a 250gig and 500gig cap (per month). I think a realistic cap should be about 1tb per month. This service is way over priced. Web providers from website hosting can give you a better deal. This of course would be comparing apples to oranges... but still. Again, pathetic.
I think this should teach people a lesson, however. Stay the hell away from cable companies. They provided lousy customer service, have poor TV channel selection, average voice services and now a growing number of them are moving to monthly caps. What was that old AOL jingle (like 95'
The whole digital downloads era collides with this ideas. I dont think there are bandwidth problems that can't be resolved with the obscene amount of money this companies get from their customers.
Besides, it's difficult for a user to control the bandwidth with services such as youtube.. you never know how much you are using!
And that will be the day I either go back to 26k dialup, or a give up on internet access forever.
Truth is, we're all at fault on this, because we've allowed our government to be run by these corporations, and we've allowed them to set the rules. And now they're going to try to push through a new set of long-term rules that will guarantee them some nasty-high short-term profits (like the oil companies), so the execs can retire rich and let the rest of us pick up the pieces. And what's left will make us wish we shot them all first before they rammed this crap down our throats.
Bottom line is, it's going to be up to us to stop this, by talking with our dollars and only using those providers who don't lock us down and charge us 'til we scream.
So, grab up the pitchforks and torches, time to take back control!
thats the biggest line of shi** i have ever heard. First I know allot about business. I have owned my own company for 11 years. and second I have done quite a bit of work with time warner and my father has been employed there for 18 years.
Yes profit is part of business however its not like tw isn't making a profit they are making billions in fact so don't give me that crap. the point here is ...this isnt about a few people who use allot of bandwidth, this is about the fact that we as a connected world are getting and wanting more from our devices and our entertainment world. tw is still working on a system that was built in the 1980's. and they wont spend the millions of dollars on the network because that would lower profit margins. so to get more customers and try to keep up with the demand for bandwidth they are going after their very own customers who they say are using to much. thats a bad business model plain and simple and trust me when they do this your going to see the headlines of its customers going to verizon( who decided to spend billions not millions but billions on fios and a high speed network and backbone.) tw is either going to go out of business or they will have to get with the times and build up their network the old line applies here. build it and they will come.
I don't know why people are going on about it to much because 1$ a giggabyte isn't that much...try 25 cents per megabyte (thats in australia) and if you are on unlimited, your plan slows down after you reach a certain limit.
Example: You have a $29.95 plan with a 5gig cap. You burn through this cap in about a week. You than go on to use about 5gigs worth of data a week. You know have a $44.95 bill for essentially 40gigs of data. If you were to go with 250gigs that would cost you $245 dollars extra (and can put a real on your pocket book if you subscribe to all three services together).
Finally, you have to basically trust them on how much bandwidth you are using. Don't think for a minute that you can actually measure your own usage and than submit a report (many do have nice weblogs to review) but the appeal process can be nasty. You usually have to pay upfront until they determine whether what they charged you was in error. If it is, you are usually issued a credit toward the next months bill. This process of course varies by corporation.
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