Time-Warner Begins Billing for High Data Use

[ButtUglyJeff]

My region is apparently next, for Time-Warner's "high data use" fees. Needless to say, having been a Time-Warner customer for years, I plan to drop them in a skinny minute.

Today I will call them to see if my internet use over the past 3 months would have incurred fees, under the new plan. If so, I will say my goodbyes.

What alternatives are there, for cable/tv/phone service, that you might recommend?

I just got the same news and was told that Time Warner will be sending out a notice explaining everything. There's also supposd to be a "guage" in the works to show you your usage. September is when the crap is hitting the fan. I'll most likely bail too.......

 

[Aeolius]

My local Time-Warner office informs me that the online tools to monitor the "GB of broadband" I am using per month are not currently available but should be in place 2-3 months before the introduction of consumption-based billing.

In the test market in Texas, they charge roughly $55/40 GB of internet consumption and $1/GB after that. One consumer estimated his bill to be over $200/month. Mine would be significantly higher, at that rate, as I have 8 Macs and 2 AppleTVs hooked up to the cable modem via an Apple Airport wireless network (I have 7 kids..).

I'd switch to AT&T's broadband, but they are testing the same usage plan.

 

[JNB]

Cox's "Premier" service (~$35/mo. when bundled) gives me 60GB/month, and in 7 years, I've never gotten a single notification of exceeding the cap. Then again, I don't join in the fun of P2P or torrents, either.

 

[mkrishnan]

Cox's "Premier" service (~$35/mo. when bundled) gives me 60GB/month, and in 7 years, I've never gotten a single notification of exceeding the cap. Then again, I don't join in the fun of P2P or torrents, either.

I similarly didn't even know Cox had a cap in the two years I used it.

For users who aren't blatantly violating the law, I guess it really depends more on the amount of video downloading or streaming they do. If we use the (presumably HD?) numbers posted earlier in the thread, and an hour show is 1.6GB, say a family gets six shows, then during on months, they might be doing something like 30-40GB of television show downloads (although I don't really know that many families who have terabytes of digital TV as of yet). The problem would really be with hot months where all the shows are releasing new episodes at the same time. If one paired a few purchased movies with that and one had something like Netflix video on demand, I guess I could see exceeding the cap fairly easily.

The suggestion above of working with companies like Akamai to reduce network traffic burden is good. Otherwise, if there is in essence a 50-100% "tax" on digital downloads because of network traffic, sales will stagnate fairly quickly (e.g. if you had to pay $1.60 for the extra 1.6 gigabytes on a $3 iTunes HD show).

 

[ravenvii]

I am not a lawyer, and don't pretend to know anything about anti-trust..
But in my mind, how is TWC (and others of their ilk (local carrier phone companies included)) NOT a monopoly? Theoretically, if I had cable TV into my home (I don't.. too rural), do I have a choice of providers? Nope. It's TWC or nothing if I want cable.
To me, that's a monopoly.

Perhaps not on the grand scale that is actually needed to classify it as a monopoly..

I'm not sayin', I'm jsut sayin'..
🙄

This is the same with phone companies. Because of the infrastructure involved and the relative impossibility of having true competition (if there are true competition, you'd have all kinds of cables going all over the place, etc, and that's only if a start-up can somehow afford to set it all up). In short, those are government-approved "local monopolies".

Which makes the argument that infrastructure such as that should be public-owned, like roads, all the stronger.

(I'm a staunch, Ayn Rand-trumping capitalist, and even I agree that it should be public-owned, which tells you something 😉)

But on the bright side, wireless is bringing in all kinds of new competition venues. Satellite, WiFi/WiMAX/4G, and with cable and phone companies becoming nearly indistinguishable, there should be more competition opportunities.

 

[Abstract]

So most people here aren't liking this, and I totally understand why. Yes, this particular pricing scheme sucks balls, but it seems that a few people are against the concept for paying for what they, or against caps.

To be honest, I wish people got charged for what they used, and let it be. Either more tiers should be set up, or per GB downloading should be more typical. How about a rate ($$$/GB) that automatically reduces as you hit certain thresholds, say everyone gets charged $0.50 per GB for the first 30 GB, and those who go over 30 GB, but use less than 60 GB will get charged $0.40/GB for every GB you use between 31 and 60 GB. Tiering goes up and up until you only get charged $0.10/GB after you exceed some limit, say 250 GB per month.

That way, no cap, plus it's fair. 😉


I do agree with the guy in the article when he said that "Those who use the majority of bandwidth will complain. Before, they got it for free. Now they have to pay." I don't agree with him that customers get it for free. They don't. They paid a monthly bill, and they use what they're allowed to use. Yes, some people really do milk the network, but it's definitely not against the rules if there's no cap. However, what I do agree with is that many people are paying the same fee, but some people, no matter how much they use the internet for work, email, MacRumours, internet shopping, iTunes songs, etc, will never use 250 GB per month like the guy who watches only Hulu, or downloads ALL his TV shows from iTunes. So either they should create more usage tiers, or the system of not differentiating heavy users from VERY heavy users continues.

The heaviest users can argue that it's not their fault if others don't use their service up to the full potential, but saying that, it's not anymore fair for people under the same plan as you, who do not use nearly as much internet (but still use a considerable amount), pay the same. However, I don't consider the current system any more fair, TBH.

 

[mkrishnan]

The heaviest users can argue that it's not their fault if others don't use their service up to the full potential, but saying that, it's not anymore fair for people under the same plan as you, who do not use nearly as much internet (but still use a considerable amount), pay the same. However, I don't consider the current system any more fair, TBH.

That makes sense to some extent, although with the internet, I think that it's still such an emerging system in terms of its features and usage, that encouraging high bandwidth use is somewhat advisable in terms of stimulating demand for services and in turn stimulating development of web tech.

A really good example of this is the iPhone -- the fact that Apple made everyone get (unlimited) data services on their phone really opened the door for the huge influx of network-dependent apps that are on the app store. The development probably would not have been nearly as dramatic if lots of iPhone users had no data services.

Similarly, tech development of web services for computers has delivered a lot of things that we really enjoy over the past few years, and I think stimulating that continues to be important.

Maybe there should be a different back-end system -- like heavy data providers like Apple paying fees to ISPs to cover the cost of transferring their data or some other re-visit of the net neutrality offer, but I think creating a pricing system that chokes users of avant-garde web services is bad for all of us ultimately... at this point in the development of the web.

 

[Abstract]

A really good example of this is the iPhone -- the fact that Apple made everyone get (unlimited) data services on their phone really opened the door for the huge influx of network-dependent apps that are on the app store. The development probably would not have been nearly as dramatic if lots of iPhone users had no data services.

True. I never thought of it that way. 😉

Actually, I said long ago that I really LIKE the fact that they force you to get a data plan when you get an iPhone, despite the initial complaints. Otherwise, it's a gimmick, just like every other mobile phone prior to the iPhone was somewhat of a gimmick, IMO. It wasn't a complete system, and I believe that the only people who got it right was Blackberry in terms of creating a mobile phone product that actually met its potential. Apple is not afraid of giving the impression how they envision the future: a fully online, mobile society. I'm glad they forced the plan on people, because the iPhone would be just another phone + mp3 player without it, where some people may use 10 or 20 MB per month. Consumers who really wanted this type of device, and yet couldn't find it because the phones manufacturers and mobile providers didn't cooperate. Well in this case, where Apple and AT&T cooperated, everything worked as planned with regards to things such as Visual Voicemail, etc.

However, you can also argue that by not applying a cap, but making users pay some initial flat rate per month and applying a $/GB rate would work as well. It could actually mean even lower prices for those who only use 200 MB per month on the iPhone.


Anyway, point taken.

 

[mkrishnan]

However, you can also argue that by not applying a cap, but making users pay some initial flat rate per month and applying a $/GB rate would work as well. It could actually mean even lower prices for those who only use 200 MB per month.

Yeah, this is true. I think there is a subset of the market who could probably live with 256kbps and a few hundred megs a month, and the kind of costs associated with US cable internet are pretty unreasonable for them. Perhaps they should just cluster the market into a few categories and offer bundles to users at different usage levels, including at least one for high-bandwidth users.

But then the other problem is that the home broadband market in the US is dominated by companies on the shortlist of scummy companies. Cable companies have a terrible reputation for customer service and are awfully backwards organizations, and landline telcos aren't much better. My other thought is the "solution" to this is a "GMail" approach to new competition.

Not that long ago, it was widely accepted that 25MB was "a lot" of e-mail inbox space, and that high-demand users could pay for 100 or 250MB. How quaint that seems now. And after Google implemented high storage e-mail accounts, they went back and proved that it didn't really cost them much. So I would be more willing to believe that the broadband providers are shouldering a huge burden in this, or that it is a really unfair situation, when they have more competition.

 

[Abstract]

Yeah, this is true. I think there is a subset of the market who could probably live with 256kbps and a few hundred megs a month, and the kind of costs associated with US cable internet are pretty unreasonable for them. Perhaps they should just cluster the market into a few categories and offer bundles to users at different usage levels, including at least one for high-bandwidth users.

Sorry, when I typed that, I was still referring to iPhone users. 😉

What I meant was that many of which would use only a few hundred MB per month anyway. I know around 5 iPhone users, and none of them use more than 100 MB per month (on average). Sometimes they'll exceed it, but they never come close to the amount allowed on the smallest cap. They just use their iPhones to check sports scores and email, and even with regards to email, they say they don't even find a huge need to check email all the time on their phones. If they're at work, they're in front of a computer. If they're at home, they use their home computer. If they're out with friends, why would they be checking email? 😉

Cable companies have a terrible reputation for customer service and are awfully backwards organizations, and landline telcos aren't much better. My other thought is the "solution" to this is a "GMail" approach to new competition.

Don't you think that perhaps having MORE competition isn't actually better? I know most people want more competition in this area, but if the goal is to get these large companies to help create a better infrastructure for the increasing use of internet, then it's easier if the market wasn't so fragmented. If it were, then each company would be making less money, and nobody would be willing to build or improve a network, especially if they're a national network across the entire US.

If you want a market that will benefit from increased competition, then you'd probably need the government to build it (ravenvii said it first). Have every company 'rent' based on the number of customers they have, or how much of the network they're using.

 

[mkrishnan]

If you want a market that will benefit from increased competition, then you'd probably need the government to build it (ravenvii said it first). Have every company 'rent' based on the number of customers they have, or how much of the network they're using.

Yeah... it does seem rather more efficient. If we did this with cell phones in the US, we'd have a single more solid 3G network instead of having four different companies roll out networks on multiple standards and multiple frequencies.

I would be quite glad if the government stepped in, built a broadband system, and let the cable companies deal with it. It seems rather unlikely, though, in the US, at least perhaps past the level of network neutrality, which itself seems hopelessly mired. Just more feckless Anglo-Saxon economics, I guess.... 😛

 

[brentsg]

It's all about keeping you boxed into their services. They want to:
---Charge you metered rates, now that they got you hooked on broadband
---Prevent you from using other vendors for your media
---Get you to use their web-based e-mail service so they can stick advertisements in your face
---Redirect you to an advertisement laden search page when you mistype a URL
---Block every single port they possibly can so they can force serious users to the ridiculously priced business plans

Did I miss anything?

 

[Thomas Veil]

This is actually the second front on which Time Warner (and AT&T and others) are attacking their customers.

For the past two years they have been going state by state, lobbying legislatures to replace your local (city) cable franchise agreements with state-wide ones. Their argument: the current system is too costly and unwieldy.

Problem: previously, if Time Warner did something to violate its contract, or simply didn't provide adequate service, your city hall had the power to pull their franchise. Now, if you don't like what TW is doing...well, complain to your state senator. You know, the one that TW gave all those campaign contributions to. I'm sure he'll be on your side.

Time Warner and AT&T are also using the state franchise scheme to get out of their obligations to carry public access channels. Under the state-wide system, they can often either eliminate channels or stick them way in the upper tiers in "digital Siberia".

On a third front, they are also trying to remove telephone rates from local control.

By the way, they say this is all for the customers' benefit, because this will encourage competition and drive down prices. Well, one month after the state-wide franchise kicked in here in Ohio, I got a bill from Time Wanker saying that my cable bill would be going up $5 a month.

This is all part of a concerted plot to screw the customer, and they are buying politicians left and right to get it implemented. We should be mad as hell.

It's all about keeping you boxed into their services. They want to:
---Charge you metered rates, now that they got you hooked on broadband
---Prevent you from using other vendors for your media
---Get you to use their web-based e-mail service so they can stick advertisements in your face
---Redirect you to an advertisement laden search page when you mistype a URL
---Block every single port they possibly can so they can force serious users to the ridiculously priced business plans

Did I miss anything?

No, you described corporate fascism pretty well.

 

[Melrose]

Time Warner sucks. I'm glad I don't have Roadrunner anymore. I'd never use them again anyway, but especially after this.

I hope this doesn't de rigur for the industry as a whole.

 

[Thomas Veil]

Time Warner sucks. I'm glad I don't have Roadrunner anymore. I'd never use them again anyway, but especially after this.

I hope this doesn't de rigur for the industry as a whole.

I'm so sick of them.

I hadda do something to express my anger, so I designed this and I'm putting it on a bumper sticker for my car:

 

[jaw04005]

But in my mind, how is TWC (and others of their ilk (local carrier phone companies included)) NOT a monopoly?

The theory is that cable networks are private networks that each cable company built and rolled out. Therefore, it's "their" lines. However, we should also keep in mind that many cable networks were either directly or indirectly subsidized by local towns and cities (by tax breaks, eminent domain threats and in some cases taxpayer subsidization).

Again, in theory, another cable company could come in to a community and, if they're willing to lay down an infrastructure, could serve that community. That's why they're not considered a monopoly.

Of course, no cable company is going to do that as the cost of laying down all that additional infrastructure would be staggering especially without subsidization (tax breaks, eminent domain rights, etc).

 

[Aeolius]

and now the local news has gotten ahold of the story:

http://www.wxii12.com/entertainment/19075973/detail.html

http://www.news-record.com/content/...ner_cable_will_track_charge_by_internet_usage

 

[ButtUglyJeff]

I need to start paying attention to what my consumption is now, so I can plan my attack on this new problem.

Does anybody know of a Mac app that monitors usage?

I have a feeling TW will hold off sharing this info with its customers, till' the last possible moment......

 

[dukebound85]

I need to start paying attention to what my consumption is now, so I can plan my attack on this new problem.

Does anybody know of a Mac app that monitors usage?

I have a feeling TW will hold off sharing this info with its customers, till' the last possible moment......

surplus meter

 

[Melrose]

Apparently, Time Warner is trying to push aside the competition? They offer some similar services to Hulu and Netflix.

Their cable business already makes enough money - it's not like they're losing anything by just sticking with the rate of inflation.

 

[steve2112]

But then the other problem is that the home broadband market in the US is dominated by companies on the shortlist of scummy companies. Cable companies have a terrible reputation for customer service and are awfully backwards organizations, and landline telcos aren't much better. My other thought is the "solution" to this is a "GMail" approach to new competition.

Not that long ago, it was widely accepted that 25MB was "a lot" of e-mail inbox space, and that high-demand users could pay for 100 or 250MB. How quaint that seems now. And after Google implemented high storage e-mail accounts, they went back and proved that it didn't really cost them much. So I would be more willing to believe that the broadband providers are shouldering a huge burden in this, or that it is a really unfair situation, when they have more competition.

This is so true. My only real choices for internet service are AT&T and Comcast. Just check out reviews of these two anywhere online, and you'll know what I mean. Yeah, there are actually a couple of companies offering third party DSL around here, but they all require having an active home phone line, which means giving money to AT&T. So, either way, I'm giving them money. This is why I was hoping Google would win those auctions for the 700mHz spectrum. It would be so sweet to see a company like Google offer wireless internet service to at least offer SOME competition. Maybe they should start using some of that dark fiber they have to offer service. 🙂

 

[CorvusCamenarum]

I need to start paying attention to what my consumption is now, so I can plan my attack on this new problem.

Does anybody know of a Mac app that monitors usage?

I have a feeling TW will hold off sharing this info with its customers, till' the last possible moment......

The iStat Pro widget shows your total traffic usage, but it only counts from when you last booted your computer.

 

[dmm219]

Time Warner Cable has made my ATV worthless

Yep. You probably heard about it. They got me. I live in Greensboro, NC. They will get all of you eventually, if people don't speak out...

TWC caps are being forced on us this summer
5G per month to a max for 40G per month.
40G plan is $60
My current TWC plan is $40 with unlimited.
There are no other options where I live. No DSL, No FiOS. TW has a complete monopoly in Greensboro.

Other cities affect are Rochester NY, and Austin and San Antonio TX.

Yes, I am angry beyond belief. As is most of the city.

Luckily for me, I'm moving back to Norther VA in 2010. Back to FiOS country. So My ATV will collect dust for a year max. And I used to HATE NOVA.

This is scary stuff folks...you better start pipin up to your local and state politicians.

Have fun with your ATV's, PS3's and 360's...I'm jealous...

 

[ravenvii]

What, exactly, is the cap on the cheapest tier ($29.99 from what I hear)? I keep hearing the highest is 40 GB, but what's the lowest?

 

[Luigi239]

Oh man, I feel for you. Time Warner is going to start offering a 100gb tier, but still, that's not enough.

When I moved to Charlotte last year, I chose AT&T DSL because Time Warner had already started doing this capping crap in Texas. The only thing is, AT&T has apparently begun trying caps in two markets, but hopefully they'll abandon this practice instead of expanding it like Time Warner.

What, exactly, is the cap on the cheapest tier ($29.99 from what I hear)? I keep hearing the highest is 40 GB, but what's the lowest?

The lowest cap is 5 GB.