“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,” The Associated Press reports.
“On Thursday, new Time Warner Cable Internet subscribers in Beaumont, Texas, will have monthly allowances for the amount of data they upload and download,” AP reports. “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,” AP reports.
“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,” AP reports.
“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,” AP reports. “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.”
“Those who mainly do Web surfing or e-mail have little reason to pay attention to the traffic caps: a gigabyte is about 3,000 Web pages, or 15,000 e-mails without attachments. But those who download movies or TV shows will want to pay attention. A standard-definition movie can take up 1.5 gigabytes, and a high-definition movie can be 6 to 8 gigabytes,” AP reports.
Full article here.
Will you be willing to pay extra if not just your home computer, but your Apple TV as well, goes over Time Warner Cable’s Internet allowance?
The problem with this is that most people don’t use anywhere near 40GB in a month, so they won’t care. The bottom line is that Time Warner can limit use if they want, it’s their service. I think they should, at the very least, offer an unlimited plan.
“You and any other person or company are free to offer your own answer to Time Warner, through Wi-Fi, WiMax, DSL, satellite, or fiber.”
Why sure I am, Towertone, and I’m also free in my spare time to learn nuclear physics and build my own nuclear powered electricity generating station.
This “solution” is not practical for the individual consumer.
> Work it kind of like AT&T;’s rollover minutes and let people keep any unused bandwidth they haven’t used.
Hmm, I could start trading in bandwidth futures…..
B
Luckily, you and no one else can build nuclear plants, or gas refineries, and soon, coal fired plants, either. Keeps the economy in Texas good.
However, you can build, or use, other means to access the internet.
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Hence, no monopoly.
I don’t have a problem with the concept, but the rates are absurd. It’s like a 30% tax on iTunes movie downloads. Ridiculous. I could see 10¢ per GB over the limit or so, depending on their limits. But in this age, everyone should have at least, say, 20 GB allowed per month. If you watch TV online, or download video, it’s normal usage.
Vote with your dollars…
Oh, and I find ironic that the cell companies are moving to “unlimited” calling plans and now cable companies are going back to charging extra
Next stop Time Warner out of internet business…
“Next stop Time Warner out of internet business…”
That ain’t gonna happen.
Eventually, internet is all that TW will offer.
Think about it.
Ok, I live in Wisconsin, and my ISP is Excel.net. They are back in the 90’s as far as internet service is concerned. (Their usage meter shows kilobytes, yes KILOBYTES!) I am paying $50 a month for a 384k/128k connection per month. I am stuck with this pathetic excuse for an ISP, because they are the only ones in our area. (I live in the country, have to have wireless) We have a pathetic, 4 GB download limit every month. We go over it all the time. After our 4 GB are up, we are reduced to a slow-dialup connection for the rest of the month. We have 4 people who use the internet daily, and even with just emails and web surfing, not including watching videos, we are pretty close to going over in the 3rd week of the month. If we want more bandwidth, it costs another $50 for 2 more GB! I would love to have a fast highspeed connection, I know people who live in milwaukee who have a 10mbps connnection for $30 a month, with no bandwidth limit!
So, right now, they bill me extra to get to 1 MB/sec download speed, and something less that 200KB/sec upload speed. So, I’m paying for high throughput. Now, they are going to change me to actually use my bandwidth? So, I pay extra for a higher speed connection with Time Warner, and they’re going to say that my 5% uses up most of the the internet traffic? I already pay for that priv. Oh, now they want to reorder the payment so as to take more advantage of the consumer. Screw off!
If they institute this policy in Los Angeles, I am moving back to DSL.
What surprises me is Comcast didn’t think of this scam first. It’s Comcastic!
I’m NW of Houston and have been a Road Runner and now Comcast user for years. I download using iTunes and DirecTV On-Demand. If Comcast starts metering I’ll go to AT&T;DSL in a heartbeat.
@macoverdose_dot_com
For Time Warner it actually isn’t stupid to do. If you go over the limit then you surely are not downloading or uploading legally. And if you are then it’s most likely they believe you are running a business and want you to upgrade and pay through the nose for business class internet which may as well be the same speed but they charge you more for it.
Comcast has a nice invisible limit which I believe is a little over 100GB a month. You cross it and you get a warning… again and they suspend it. Happened to some people I know. So I just keep it under 100GB a month and im good.
$1 a gig is not expensive.
Compare that to Australia, it’s 15cents per megabyte when we go over.
Some of you may not know, or might not be thinking of this, but:
Cable Internet, at the local block/street level, is distributed via a “common node” so you have to “share” bandwidth with your neighbors. You may have a potential of 8 MB, for example, if you’re the only one online. But once the kid next door starts downloading from UseNet, well, do the math.
DSL, however, is dedicated. So what you pay for is what you get.
Yes, it is chitty of Cable to charge extra for those who use extra, but is the nature of that technology. Unless you’re the kid downloading everything – and doubt you want him eating up ALL the available bandwidth along your street, and paying same as you – you might want to get DSL.
Otherwise, hang in there a while longer. Won’t be too many more years before all the “wire and cable” folks can kiss our ass.
Beam us around Scotty with that WiMax/WiFi/700Mhz/whatever … just get us off the damn umbilical cords.
Thanks
BC Kelly
Tallahassee Fla
“This is unfair abuse of monopoly power and I hope our government doesn’t tolerate this.”
And what makes you think the government is not in bed on this? They have wanted to generate revenue from the internet for years. This is nothing more than a way to sneak in revenue generation through the back door. Pay more. Tax more. It’s that simple.
If you think that’s bad, how about getting your download speed throttled down to worse-than-dialup for 400MB? That’s right, megabytes. And I pay $100/month for that privilege. Hughes satellite is even worse than Time-Warner. That’s right, feel my pain…
I dislike this move. Hopefully free market enterprise will take care of this. The problem, however, is that there are really only a couple of choices for ISP, as one has only so many pipes into one’s house. Be glad when someone rolls out fiber….
@BC Kelly:
DSL, however, is dedicated. So what you pay for is what you get.
Not necessarily true. <strike>SBC</strike> AT&T has a system where it uses mini-DSLAMs in the neighborhood, each fed by fiber or high-speed copper links. All of the users of this local unit share that bandwidth, although you do have the rated speed from your modem to the local unit. If everyone is using their max bandwidth, however, the same slowdown can happen as with cable modem.
MW: What’s clear is that there ain’t no free lunch.
And people wonder what Apple is saving up its war chest for. Moves like this just may tempt them to become an ISP.
This is what is called PARASITE GOUGING.
What is going on in the background is the streamed and downloaded video revolution. Apple TV is just the tip of the ice burg of what is rapidly being developed, if not already here. Example: This Wednesday I am attending a demonstration of MythTV for Linux which will integrate computers with your entire entertainment center with Internet downloaded media as the main source.
So what does Time Warner want to do? DOUBLE the cost of your downloads. 4 GB HD movie? $4.00. Then DOUBLE that for the Time Warner highway tax. F*ck that!
As a reference, here is what I currently pay for Time Warner service in Syracuse, NY, where we have 4 competitors in the broadband market: $46 per month for 10 Mbit/sec download, 1 Mbit/sec upload. “Business Class” at my office is 15 Mbit/sec down, 2 Mbit/sec up. The total possible bandwidth via Time Warner locally is 20 Mbit/sec down max, 5 Mbit/sec up.
The competition: Version FIOS optical net service. ClearWire, who rumor has it will be using WiMax Internet connections next year. Meridian, using AC current access to the Internet.
FACT: If Time Warner tries this scam around here, someone else will NOT. Customers will ABANDON TimeWarner and go with the competition.
Meanwhile in Beaumont, Texas: Time Warner are taking advantage of monopoly status to screw their customers. They can get away with the scam, so they’re doing it. There has already been considerable protest to stop this monopolist action, but Time Warner has ignored it, because they can.
Expect a mighty uproar as this disease spreads around the country to Comcast, etc.
:-Q**********
the bastards. I will not pay for my piracy bandwidth, that goes against everything i believe in as a pirate!
Some comments on comments:
jtc sez:
“For Time Warner it actually isn’t stupid to do. If you go over the limit then you surely are not downloading or uploading legally.”
INCORRECT. Streamed and downloaded PURCHASED video over the Internet is already here. Go over your limit and the typical cost of a video is DOUBLED, with half the money going to Time Warner. Explain to everyone how that makes ANY sense.
Fighting back: DEMAND to your local government that your local broadband ISP monopoly END NOW! Get as many competitors into your market as possible. DUMP abusive ISPs. The customer rules. Make the service provider bend to the will of the customer, never the other way around.
Meanwhile, get your local government to instigate upgrading local bandwidth with fiber cable upgrades, etc. Clearly we are headed into a bandwidth crunch, so get on top of it ASAP. Don’t give the ISPs any ammunition to support their GOUGING perpetration.