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Time Warner Testing Metered Internet Usage

Sigh, why am I not surprised. Their big competitors, ATT and Comcast already have metered internet, so why don't they do the same? They get more profit and less chance of losing customers since their competition is just as evil and restrictive as they are. :mad:
 
I wonder what services like Steam, Xbox Live, Playstation Network, Netflix, etc. will do when the evil ISPs make it so that customers can't even use their services within a reasonable amount anymore. :(
 
It all comes down to lack of competition... The ISPs have no accountability to the consumer. All they have to do is spout off one of the following BS lines and everything is "okay" again:

1) Our pricing is in line with other service provider's offerings.
2) It's necessary to prevent a degradation of service.
3) 98% of customers are unaffected by the changes
4) It's necessary to keep our cutting-edge network at the forefront of technology!

A good example of the utter disconnect between the ISP and the consumer's needs are the DSL "lite" packages up here in Canada. The monthly usage allowances range from approximately 1GB to 5GB. Granted, most users are also going to be of the "lite" variety with little more usage other than some Facebook, email, or light web surfing. However, take into consideration that pathetic usage limitations like these cut off some important parts of the Internet like:

1) Online video streaming, specifically Netflix (I think we can all agree that this is the #1 target of usage caps)
2) Online gaming (the last WoW update was ~9GB)
3) Operating System Upgrades and updates. (OSX Lion is download ONLY and over 4GB. So, Aunt Flo can't upgrade her Mac without paying an overage)

And what really doesn't make any sense at all is that you can download more data in a month over dial-up than you can over these DSL connections. (roughtly 15GB/month over 56k dial-up).

The ISPs want UBB to become the norm so in the future we can all tell our grandchildren that a long long time ago everyone had "unlimited Internet". They'll all look at us and say "Okay, whatever Grandpa go back to playing that old Angry Birds game".

Riley
 
S[H]ady;1037407355 said:
With all the competition in the market I think Time Warner will be disappointed again. Unless they come up with some really reasonable pricing schemes, they will see a mass exodus of customers.
Click to expand...

Mass exodus to... what? Some of us don't have much choice. TWC is the only internet I can get in my area aside from dialup.

dark4181 said:
The only way that metered billing might fly is if they uncap speeds for everyone and just sell bandwidth. 50GB = $25, 100GB = $40, 250GB = $75, and so on. And it would be even better if the amount purchased ran until used up, rather than being capped at 30 days. I'd love to buy 500GB worth of internet bandwidth and just run it for 4 months until I run out and need to buy more
Click to expand...

Your suggestion makes too much sense to be implemented. Ever. :p At least, by the big companies. They still want that monthly fee out of you.

Skud said:
The only issue I'm afraid of is what's going to happen in the future? Companies today are implementing 40GB, 60GB, and even some have 5GB caps. So then what happens when national or global Internet usage goes up by 50% in a few years? I doubt the ISPs are going to magically increase those low-today and stifling-tomorrow limitations without charging some additional "fee".
Click to expand...

That would be a big concern.
 
dark4181 said:
The only way that metered billing might fly is if they uncap speeds for everyone and just sell bandwidth. 50GB = $25, 100GB = $40, 250GB = $75, and so on. And it would be even better if the amount purchased ran until used up, rather than being capped at 30 days. I'd love to buy 500GB worth of internet bandwidth and just run it for 4 months until I run out and need to buy more
Click to expand...

With such plan, I could buy 50GB for my parents and that would last them 6-12 months.

Thats so not gonna happen. ISP don't do these crap to make internet cheap for the low usage consumers, but rather to rip off those average to high usage users
 
dark4181 said:
The only way that metered billing might fly is if they uncap speeds for everyone and just sell bandwidth. 50GB = $25, 100GB = $40, 250GB = $75, and so on. And it would be even better if the amount purchased ran until used up, rather than being capped at 30 days. I'd love to buy 500GB worth of internet bandwidth and just run it for 4 months until I run out and need to buy more
Click to expand...

I'd love to see the ISPs response to this. They're so stuck on the problem being a "bandwidth shortage". If there is such a data shortage then let people pay for the data.

Sad part is they would charge $2 or $3 per GB. Then, out of nowhere, "bandwidth is expensive...".

Riley
 
His example is a little extreeme. If you want 8 hours a day of smooth video, you'll need a reatively high speed plan.
If you just want to check email once a week you can do that on dial up.

There's your diffrence in price right there.

At least if you're going to build your message arround an example make it an example that makes sense!
 
This whole thing scares me, I'm from Canada and was really worried about this when it was all the talk earlier this year and I know it is only a matter of time before the bring this up again.

I'd consider myself an above average user but not an abuser. I watch 2-3 movies in HD a week on netflix and my 15 month old girl watches 1-2 hours of netflix TV shows a day (shows like Franklin, Dora, etc). I also subscribe to NHL Game Center Live and stream hockey games, I watched most of the playoffs on cbc.ca and I use TV stations online like spiketv and globaltv to watch many TV shows (especially The Ultimate Fighter on Spike). I typically watch UFC events live from UFC.TV. A typical HD movie from netflix consumes 3-4GB of data in my experience. A sporting event like a hockey game or full UFC event is typically 4-6GB. This usage is on top of my normal web surfing, watching some HD content on youtube and digital downloads of video games from steam, xbox live, etc. Hell a clean WoW install is 20GB or so to download. Major ISPs in Canada wanted a 50Gb celing and wanted to charge up to $5 per GB over that. I use about 150GB a month, so months a little less but I've never gone over 210GB. I don't consider that abusive. If Bell and Rogers had implement that cap my Internet bill of $55 for 7MBps DL/640KBps UL (yes that is right) would go to something like $200-400 a month based on my existing usage in over charges since I would be in a package that would have been charged $2.5 per GB. so $55 a month for 50GB plus 160GB over (based on my max of 210GB) would be a $400 over charge plus our 13% sales tax means I'd have a $514.15 Internet bill for a months usage if I went to 210GB. That's crazy.

The biggest reason for this increase is because it is easier to charge customers more than to provide fair competition. If they could compete fairly with online streaming service then cable companies wouldn't need to do this. Oh I also forgot to mention that here in Canada the video services provided by ISP's don't count as bandwith used against you're monthly allowance. So I can watch a movie on Netflix for my $8 monthly charge. If the ISP charges me for additional bandwith between $2-5 a GB then the movie costs me about 6$-$20 based on 3-4GB of data usage. If I had to pay $5 a GB then watching movies on Netflix wouldn't be an option, they would eliminate that competitor as it would be cheaper for me to go to the video store and buy the movie. Luckily the ISP's video service doesn't charge for bandwith usage but I can rent movies for $4.99-7.99 each. Seems unfair really, if it weren't for the fact that these big companies poor so much money into politicians this would all be considered unfair competitive practices.
 
I forgot to add my Father has a $60 Internet plan from Rogers too, he gets 60GB of bandwith each month. Here is their current usages.

My dad uses ebay a lot and uploads pictures of items he is selling, he also checks email. He goes to some news websites and watches the occasional video online from these sites. He also browses pictures of his grand children online and has Windows automatic updates enabled on his PC.

My mom also has Windows automatic updates enabled on her PC and goes online to look for materials to make quilts and to find quilt patterns and quilting is her hobby. She will also look at the occasional picture online and likes to play online jigsaw puzzles.

Their monthly usage is typically 30-40GB per month and I can't really see how you could do much less on the Internet they they do.I lived with them for a few months while my house was being constructed and I basically couldn't use the Internet at all without going above the 60GB limit. At that time my wife (who uses facebook and news sites) and myself and my parents lived under the same roof with a total 60GB limit, thats 15GB per person. Pretty crazy considering I've got games from Steam that take 15Gb or more.
 
The only thing that I'm hoping is that since I'm one of their "premium" customers with their "premium" service (Signature Home Service) they won't cap those users. God, I hope they don't do that.

Yeah, I have 50 Mbps downstream and 5 Mbps upstream. What good is that if I can't even really use the service without being afraid of going over some usage number.
 
Mr. K6 said:
I'm not sure what you mean by "when everything is online it'll be 30% or 50%"? That we'll all eventually start consuming a lot as everything goes to streaming? Sure, I agree, but the networks will hopefully expand and develop accordingly to meet the overall customer demand.

Beyond pointing out the obvious that cooking dinner is a lot simpler than providing internet service, I'll run with your analogy. Suppose those "big eaters" eat all the food so that everyone is constantly waiting for new food from the kitchen to be put out at the buffet. You'd wait there so long and then say "well this is BS" and go to another restaurant. However, with ISP's, there really isn't a lot of competition, so many times this isn't a possibility.

So then, if the restaurant changes to a menu/meal-based venture with still competitive prices, who's really hurt? The same people who were "paying for the big eaters" at the buffet will hopefully still be paying the same meal price for an amount of food they were consuming either. The ones who will be pissed and complain are the "big eaters" who were disproportionately using the service per fee paid. They then would be more than welcome to go to another restaurant (or ISP), should one exist that will allow them to again act as such.

I agree that ISP's raking in profits while not putting them back into the network is BS. I also think everyone paying the same flat rate that is disproportionate to their usage is obsolete and needs to be reconsidered. Like I said, it all depends on how the system is restructured should these "tests" promote change, and that the resulting solution is fair to both the company and its customers.
Click to expand...

He meant that instead of the ISP dumping money back into their network they will just lower what's considered "high utilization" and now your 2% of "high utilization users" is your mom clicking a youtube video about cats. I think this is more likely than the ISP's putting money back into their network. Why innovate when you can just charge more?
 
It's been 2 years. I guess they think people have grown more stupid.
 
ISPs didn't care about bandwidth until streaming video became common. The ISPs are only protecting their revenue streams from cable TV and VOD. The government should break up this monopoly. ISPs should not also be providing content. Conflict of interest. It will never happen though :( ISPs spend enough money on politicians to protect themselves from antitrust cases. :mad:
 
ISPs didn't care about bandwidth until streaming video became common. The ISPs are only protecting their revenue streams from cable TV and VOD. The government should break up this monopoly. ISPs should not also be providing content. Conflict of interest. It will never happen though ISPs spend enough money on politicians to protect themselves from antitrust cases.
 
I live in Rochester and I am very pissed because I was going to go back to Time Warner for the house I am going to rent this fall. We stopped the cap once but, I thought that was going to be enough to shut them up.

In work for another ISP company in Rochester, we only serve businesses however, and if this does roll out theres not much that can be done. They have a corner on the market since frontier has issues even serving a few people. I know for a fact in Rochester that Frontier oversubcribes by 800% so they would sell 8Gbs of bandwidth for a 1Gb backbone. They are the only real competitor and they suck horrendously. At my current living situation Frontier tried to sell a 300/300 circuit and gave only a 300 IP address block for 900 college kids............yeah because not everyone needs an IP address.

Time warner used to be decent enough and even boosted my upload speed before without saying anything. I hope to god this never goes through. I called Time Warner and plan on calling again if necessary. I pay for a certain amount of bandwidth a month not for data.

I wish I could get a circuit from my company we don't oversubscribe any circuit if you have a 100mb circuit you can use 100mbs 24/7. Plus our NOC actually answers the phone and it doesn't sit on hold for hours (took me 45 mins once with Frontier).
 
These companies are trying to make people believe bandwidth is getting more scarce and more costly. The more time that passes the cheaper bandwidth gets as the ceiling raises more and more. These companies are just trying to nickle and dime everyone. Its all a scam.
 
All of those large, corporate ISPs are just full of shit. If Sonic.net can offer high-speed broadband for pretty low prices (including their uncapped 1Gbps fiber pilot in Sebestapol, CA for $70/mo) there's no way ISPs should be charging us more while giving us less.

On a slightly brighter note, I'm kinda happy that Charter dropped the $10 fee for not having cable along with the internet. It's still not cheap ($45/mo for 18/2), but our only alternative is AT&T and that won't cut it for 5 college guys.
 
I don't get why ISPs seem to keep wanting to bring us in the dark ages.

This is 2011, the internet has lot of rich media and lot of bandwidth intensive stuff. They should deal with it and provide us with the bandwidth we need, and let us use it, because we are paying for it.

For them (at least the high end providers), it's a one time cost to upgrade bandwidth by upgrading equipment, so it's not like they arn't making lot of money from us paying monthly.

I fear for the day this BS comes here. I can't imagine having to revert to snail mail for offsite backups and other bandwidth intensive activities.
 
Red Squirrel said:
I don't get why ISPs seem to keep wanting to bring us in the dark ages.

This is 2011, the internet has lot of rich media and lot of bandwidth intensive stuff. They should deal with it and provide us with the bandwidth we need, and let us use it, because we are paying for it.
Click to expand...

It's okay to use those things.. As long as they come from the ISP..

Riley
 
Red Squirrel said:
I don't get why ISPs seem to keep wanting to bring us in the dark ages.

This is 2011, the internet has lot of rich media and lot of bandwidth intensive stuff. They should deal with it and provide us with the bandwidth we need, and let us use it, because we are paying for it.

For them (at least the high end providers), it's a one time cost to upgrade bandwidth by upgrading equipment, so it's not like they arn't making lot of money from us paying monthly.

I fear for the day this BS comes here. I can't imagine having to revert to snail mail for offsite backups and other bandwidth intensive activities.
Click to expand...

Two reasons:

A) They can make more money by keeping the existing hardware (why pay to upgrade it when there is no return on investment), and then claim "bandwidth shortage, must charge for data transferred!". Why spend extra money on hardware, when they won't make anything back?

B) In lots of area there legally is no competition. They can do whatever the F they want, and if you don't like it, oh well, tough break for you.
 
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