Time Warner Cable Tries Metering Internet Use

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I have no idea why internet service providers think it is a good idea to impose caps on bandwidth, it just drives customers away. I know the statistics say that 5% of users consume half the total capacity on cable networks but is the “fix” to penalize 100% of your customers for the actions of a few? Just doesn't make sense.

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.
 
5 gigabyte cap for 30 dollars a month? That is ridiculous. What happens when you have to download Age of Conan again?
 
I didn't even notice it counted towards both download AND upload...that is just down right moronic.
 
Ok so the normal Road Runner account is capped at 40 GB both ways? I know in my downloading days with Turbo I hit that a couple months in a row, but then again I was downloading way more than any sane person had a right to :)
 
Sympatico did that to me a while back.

Tried to charge us $200 or so.

They didn't warn us first though, so we didn't pay them and left for Cogeco.

Year after that, maybe less, they removed the bandwidth cap.
 
in australia we have telstra

$150 for 60gb
0.15c per meg once you go over... totals about $150 a gig
 
Even on the higher speed, it is 1.38 per GB. If I downloaded AOC for example, it would cost me 20 dollars on top of the cost of the game.
 
I have no idea why internet service providers think it is a good idea to impose caps on bandwidth, it just drives customers away. I know the statistics say that 5% of users consume half the total capacity on cable networks but is the “fix” to penalize 100% of your customers for the actions of a few? Just doesn't make sense.

I posted about this before at broadbandreports.com


The issue is not about metered bandwidth. Its about how caps are implemented or used.

If the caps are reasonable and the customer is given a way to see how much bandwidth they have used. OR a better alternative is the customer being given the choice, throttled down to a slower speed verses billed by the GB. Its all in how the ISP chooses to offer their services.

Personally I think the speed of your connectivity is not an issue. All DSL should be a minimum of 2Mbps down and 384Kbps up. The ISP should offer speed for free and meter by bandwidth used. Metered usage should be something along the lines of 50GB, 200GB and unlimited. The lowest tier for browsing users, the middle tier for power users and unlimited for businesses and the [H]ardcore. $29.99 $59.99 and $99.99

Throttling should be down to 768Kbps/128Kbps till the next billing cycle.

Done correctly metered billing could result in a surge in sales. Imagion comcast selling $29.99 for 20Mbps. It also makes the user more responsible for bots on their network consuming bandwith without the operators knowledge.

I use speakeasy and I consume anywhere between 20GB per month and 150GB per month, depending on what I am doing.
 
I streamed all of season 2 Heroes in HD to my computer from my Netflix account on Saturday...... I don't even want to know how much that would have cost :eek:

 
I would crack that if I bought a recent game on Steam. Hell I think AC was 9 Gigs when I downloaded the full game.
 
I use my internet to game and check my email...I don't download movies or other crap...

Why should my connection and prices be jacked to make up for the people that think bittorrent is their own personal film library?

On the flipside, the providers should be compensating me for using LESS bandwidth than the average person...
 
Wow. Hamfisted and retarded. This is what happens when suits try to be IT guys. They must not have meaningful competition in their market.

Here Comcast is slugging it out with Verizon FiOS. Comcast is desperate, hanging fliers on your door telling you about their optical network and 16/2mbps tier and ignoring that it costs more than the FiOS 15/15 service AND never actually goes that fast AND that their optical cable is four blocks away in a box next to the road rather than sticking into the side of my house.

Competition is groovy.
 
I know the statistics say that 5% of users consume half the total capacity on cable networks but is the “fix” to penalize 100% of your customers for the actions of a few? Just doesn't make sense.

A better question in my mind would be, why cap anyone for using what they pay for, and why penalize anyone for using what they pay for? If a Provider sells a 5mbs/1mbs service, it should be just that at 24/7. As far as I'm concerned, it's false advertising when they sell such a service while also stating how fast their service is, yet not allowing the consumer to use it to it's fullest extent.

Comcast is such a Provider. They SAY that you can get 6mbs/1.5mbs service with speedboost to 8mbs. They also make quite a to do about how fast it is. The other thing that they do is to intimidate their customers with their well known ban for what they consider overuse. They will certainly call you and tell you that you overuse, but they won't give you any guidelines as to what overuse is. By doing this, they intimidate their customers into not using what they pay for simply because the customer doesn't know what their definition of overuse is (how much), so they use much less than they normally would. As far as I'm concerned, they would have more customers and better relations with them if they would spend some of those millions upon millions they spend on false advertising and update their network. (they also sell what they say is top notch HDTV, but it's not so top notch as they continually drop the quality so that they can add more channels. Is that right? How about doing it right and update to give proper HDTV AND be able to add those new channels without screwing the customer?) I liken all of these abusive actions to thievery.

On the other hand, they cap and block without telling their customers. That to me is likened to the Post Office telling me that I can write a letter to my friend, but I can only use xx amount of words, and they have the right to block out whatever parts of it they so chose. If you subscribed to a phone carrier for unlimited use, and they called you and said you couldn't use it that much, would you be happy, or feel that you are getting what you paid for?

The service I pay for is supposed to be provided to me 24/7 at a certain speed. That is what I expect to get, not some facsimile of.
 
its just like how cell phone compaines charge your for minutes or txt. anything to get money out of customers.
 
I use my internet to game and check my email...I don't download movies or other crap...

Why should my connection and prices be jacked to make up for the people that think bittorrent is their own personal film library?

On the flipside, the providers should be compensating me for using LESS bandwidth than the average person...

Because someday you WILL want to use streaming video, buy downloadable movies, and other legal stuff, then you'll be screwed.
 
For the record;

I move over 5GB a week. Of this, maybe 250-300MB is actual "downloads." That's right, 4.75GB a week just in transient data. It's not hard. VPN for work, YouTube, streaming audio, online games. 5GB a month isn't even remotely reasonable for anyone who does more than casual browsing or email. And no, they have absolutely no clue what you're actually downloading and what's transient data, they meter how many bits go across the port because that's all they can do without inviting ginormous lawsuits.
 
A better question in my mind would be, why cap anyone for using what they pay for, and why penalize anyone for using what they pay for? If a Provider sells a 5mbs/1mbs service, it should be just that at 24/7. As far as I'm concerned, it's false advertising when they sell such a service while also stating how fast their service is, yet not allowing the consumer to use it to it's fullest extent.

Comcast is such a Provider. They SAY that you can get 6mbs/1.5mbs service with speedboost to 8mbs. They also make quite a to do about how fast it is. The other thing that they do is to intimidate their customers with their well known ban for what they consider overuse. They will certainly call you and tell you that you overuse, but they won't give you any guidelines as to what overuse is. By doing this, they intimidate their customers into not using what they pay for simply because the customer doesn't know what their definition of overuse is (how much), so they use much less than they normally would. As far as I'm concerned, they would have more customers and better relations with them if they would spend some of those millions upon millions they spend on false advertising and update their network. (they also sell what they say is top notch HDTV, but it's not so top notch as they continually drop the quality so that they can add more channels. Is that right? How about doing it right and update to give proper HDTV AND be able to add those new channels without screwing the customer?) I liken all of these abusive actions to thievery.

On the other hand, they cap and block without telling their customers. That to me is likened to the Post Office telling me that I can write a letter to my friend, but I can only use xx amount of words, and they have the right to block out whatever parts of it they so chose. If you subscribed to a phone carrier for unlimited use, and they called you and said you couldn't use it that much, would you be happy, or feel that you are getting what you paid for?

The service I pay for is supposed to be provided to me 24/7 at a certain speed. That is what I expect to get, not some facsimile of.

Note how it cable companies that are talking about implementing caps and metering? DSL doesn't have the shared bandwidth issue, so telcos are immune to this problem. Of course, if metering and caps catch on telcos will jump on the bandwagon because they can, not because they need to.
 
Come on and just just say it Time Warner, Comcast, etc.

"The stockholders want next years profits to be higher than last years already sizable profits, so we are going to: add more customers without increasing bandwidth use, cap you, charge you more, and give you slower than advertised speeds most of the time. Oh, and no way are we going to do more than token, bare minimum upgrades to our slow and aging infrastructure. OK,".

That was easy enough to say wasn't it?

Now, in all honesty, I can see their point to an extent. A tiered system for bandwidth usage is the easiest, most truly sustainable model. ISP's pay for bandwidth, the customers should as well.

Logging the amount of bandwidth an account has used every month for the last 6 and presenting it to the customer and then offering tiered bandwidth plans, or a flat per gigabyte plan to a now informed customer would seem a reasonable way to go about it. I doubt they will do it that way though, because overage fees will increase profits.
 
I don't disagree for thier limiting, but 5gb is a little low. However, its their service and product and they can do what they want to it... if we don't like it, we should talk with our wallets and go elsewhere.
 
Reminds me of how I just bought a sprint EDO wireless card for my notebook. 59.99 a month for unlimited usage, but now I have read that on July 13th they are going to change it to 5GB a month max. I am going to keep it for about 27 days or so total, then return it within the 30 day trial period.

I feel as though there should be a lawsuit against them for advertising unlimited when they KNOW in advance they are going to remove unlimited.
 
As mentioned earlier, caps/throttling can be done in a sane way if the companies want it. Living in Oz, we have a choice of a few good ISPs and alot of bad, all with caps so it can work. ISP's just need to look at what actually gets used by a sane person and market to them (Sane defined as probably 50-100GB caps min to allow for streaming whilst not charging your firstborn.) whilst at the same time having more expensive tiers to those idiots who think DLing everything they find is OK. Most people won't use 50gb per month, only a few will, but they need to know they are doing it without being penalized.
 
Note how it cable companies that are talking about implementing caps and metering? DSL doesn't have the shared bandwidth issue, so telcos are immune to this problem. Of course, if metering and caps catch on telcos will jump on the bandwagon because they can, not because they need to.

DSL providers have unlimited bandwidth? No matter how many people are using their service not a single person on their network will ever see their bandwidth drop?
 
I looked up my traffic... I did 6gb on the 31st....

That is what one day with Netflix streaming will do :p

 
well if they do price per gig it would suck.

I remember my old sprint phone had free internet access and when I changed phone I got charged like 500 dollars for using the internet because the new phone internet isn't internet anymore but something else.

What a load of crap.

So for cable internet
I know i download about 4gb+ every day. Heck sometimes time i downloaded like 15 gb per day

Cable companies are complaining yet they could do so many things but they dont want to spend the cost to fix the problem because the problem really is not that big.

You know people that uncap cable modems, change mac address and stuff. Those could be prevented by using the newest modem rules only. It would require the companies to change all the old cable modems they given out. But heck, lot of time people are getting charge for just having the cable modem as a rental fee. And they dont stop charging even if the cost is covered.
 
I don't disagree for thier limiting, but 5gb is a little low. However, its their service and product and they can do what they want to it... if we don't like it, we should talk with our wallets and go elsewhere.

Yeah that would be nice. But, Here in San Antonio my only other choice is AT&T that offers half of the speed at double the price.
 
I'm glad I got rid of Time Warner Cable. I got FIOS and I couldn't be happier with the internet performance I get now.
 
The fundamental problem is the same as it has always been "DONT ADVERTISE AN "UNLIMITED" SERVICE IF YOU ARENT PREPARED FOR SOMEONE TO USE SAID SERVICE IN AN UNLIMITED FASION"
 
You put a cap on me I'll change providers. I will continue to do that until there are no more options available.

Upon reaching that status, I will start using other peoples internet and stealing there bandwidth. It's the sad truth most people will do.
 
I'm glad I got rid of Time Warner Cable. I got FIOS and I couldn't be happier with the internet performance I get now.
The problem for many of us is that we don't have much in the line of options. You would think the offerings in a major city would be plentiful, but it's just not so. :mad:

Where we are in Los Angeles, TW is your only choice for cable, then there's DSL or dial-up. There's no FIOS here and it's not likely to be available in the near future. :(
 
I'm glad I got rid of Time Warner Cable. I got FIOS and I couldn't be happier with the internet performance I get now.

I REALLY want FIOS but can't get it where I live at the moment. Time Warner make a tidy sum from me as I have TV, Internet, phone and security with them and if they ever screwed with customers like myself and have the FIOS they'd be in a world of hurt. They get $300 a month from me. If they try to screw me over they'll get nothing. I work out the house a lot so yeah, I eat a lot bandwidth. But its my job. They start doing this to telecommuters and I think it will bite them in the ass.

Give me the price straight up, don't play games.
 
The fundamental problem is the same as it has always been "DONT ADVERTISE AN "UNLIMITED" SERVICE IF YOU ARENT PREPARED FOR SOMEONE TO USE SAID SERVICE IN AN UNLIMITED FASION"


case fuckin closed. go no further. the people need to stop allowing this brainwashing and FORCE companies to be CLEAR and HONEST about their claims.

and to end on a positive- i'll give props to WELLS FARGO FINANCIAL for just that. you want a loan that you can understand? talk to those guys. no joke.
 
Hmm, let's see.

Di.fm premium streams at 192kbps. A day is 86500 seconds... I listen to 12 hours of music a day. Which means I use exactly 1gb a day to listen to music.

Hey, TWC. Go fuck yourselves you dirty bitches. That's right, you heard me.
 
Hmm, let's see.

Di.fm premium streams at 192kbps. A day is 86500 seconds... I listen to 12 hours of music a day. Which means I use exactly 1gb a day to listen to music.

Hey, TWC. Go fuck yourselves you dirty bitches. That's right, you heard me.

agreed. its like if sprint would try doing it, when they sell streaming services as part of their package. i know an ISP doesnt sell streaming specifically, but they just sell the damn means to do it.... like a dvd player, its your device and manufacturer shouldn't be the ones to tell you what or how long to play on it!!!!!!
 
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