Time Warner Cable Experimenting With Overage Charges For Top Users
from the bait-and-switch dept
Broadband Reports notes that internal memos from Time Warner Cable suggest the company is experimenting with overage fees for their highest bandwidth users in Beaumont, Texas. If those overage charges work, the idea, of course, would be to then roll them out nationwide. On the whole, overage charges are a lot more palatable than unpublished traffic shaping rules or "fuzzy caps" where the top users are cut off without any explanation of what line they crossed. The key, of course, is that with both of those latter "solutions," the subscriber is told they're getting unlimited service, but the reality is different. Assuming that the overage charges and the rules surrounding them are clearly communicated, such charges are more reasonable. However, there are still questions about how consumers will react to such a change, especially after being sold on an "unlimited" service. The bigger issue is that capping bandwidth usage is a way to slow down internet-based innovation. If there had been overage charges a few years back, services like YouTube might never have caught on, as people would be too worried about how much bandwidth it would suck up. If the cable companies can't provide enough bandwidth, that's clearly an issue -- but most reports suggest that claims of a bandwidth crunch are overblown. Update: Just saw Adam Thierer's amusing pre-emptive reply to me on the topic. I'm not as against the idea as he suggests, though I do think, in the long run, it's not a very good solution.
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Filed Under: bandwidth, caps, overage charges
Companies: time warner cable
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The problem is, while they're touting broadband for everything from streaming netflix and other video services, youtube, streaming radio stations, publishing and viewing full videos, video emails and countless other heavy use services, I'm sure they're going to limit people to the point that only your elderly grandmother who uses the internet for a half dozen emails every month and to check her church newsletter online can avoid going over.
They seem to have an absurd idea of what "high usage" is. Diggnation videos are often about 700mb per episode. That's 2.8gb a month just for that. Presuming you don't use bittorrent in which case you'll be using about 5.6gb of bandwidth (if you're a nice torrenter and not a leech). That's just ONE video podcast. Plus, I download a podcast of a radio show I can't get over the air 1500 miles away from home and that comes out to 2gb/mo. And another one that does about 2gb/mo. And crankygeeks, dl.tv, totally rad show, etc. And I use a VPN/VNC connection to view a remote desktop at the office so I can get things done from home. And since radio out here sucks, I also stream things almost constantly (like KFI in LA out to here in the midwest).
But if Comcast and others had their way, I'd be using this 8mbps connection with 25mbps "burst" speed for emails from grandma and nothing else.
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Re:
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Re:
also, if someone goes over their limit, I hope they're not charged ridiculously like on a cell phone. They should just be bumped up to the next pricing tier. i.e. Someone who goes over should not get charged $100 of overage charges when unlimited would have been $20 more a month.
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Re: Bandwidth
Talk among cable is if they can limit your connection to 5-10-15GB they can then SELL true unlimited access (that does not come off your quota) to sites like google and youtube.
Even more scary is AT&T with their huge customer bases is debating if they impose a cap/overage then they can offer competing websites to popular services on the net and not include use of their own services in the overage/caps.
It's a way to throw out net neutrality and be legal by telling congress it treats everyone the same.
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Sell it twice department
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Re: Sell it twice department
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The question is
Does any one have data on that? From the number of complaints it seems that Americans get really screwed by the internet providers.
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Other countries
If I go over an unstated limit I get a mild letter stating that professional video downloaders (correctly read: pirate)typically download over 100 GB of movies a month. After asking a representative of TKS (ISP) they proferred a fair use limit of 100 GB. BUT ONLY AFTER ASKING
The quality of the service is comparable but the price is not. In Oklahoma City, OK I paid $60 monthly for an often acheived 10 Mbps connection through COX cable...with more than basic cable tv.
On the whole, if I wasn't being paid more because of the difference in the dollar fat Tony would not be surfing or playing WoW after work.
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This has more to do with killing netflix than anyt
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Bandwith Charges
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Just another class-action lawsuit waiting to happe
Just my 2 1/2 cents (adjusted for inflation)
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i do see a problem with things like gouging, false advertising, shady tacitcs...etc.
you say i have unlimited internet access at xx Mbps, i'd like to see an average of .8 XX total speed. i'd like to have unlimited access.
if you say typical is .6 XX and you have a cap of yy GB, and if you go over you pay this much... fine. i know what i'm getting at.
If you say theres a limit and you will pay a fee if you go over that, but we're not telling you what the fee is and what the limit is, i have a problem.
and if i'm in the middle of a contract, i would have a problem if the contract was change (especially if there was a "we can change this..." somewhere hidden and vague and whatnot.
so...it's an interesting solution, but implementation sounds a bit shady..
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Re:
if the service that i am paying for, and the tos that i signed says one thing, and they try to come in and change it, they will see me in court
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Time Warner
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Well, crap.
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Probably not so much about usage
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Re: Shut Up???
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Re: Re: Shut Up???
I pay £18 (~$36) per month for a 24mbit which syncs at just under 17mbit giving me a rock solid, and I really do mean rock solid 1.55MBs download speed. There is a "fuzzy" limit but so far I've hit 400GB in a month without getting told off by my ISP.
Enjoy your broadband too ;-p
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Underage Charges
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Re: Underage Charges
The cable companies have a true "legal" monopoly here in the US because there is only one cable company contract for each area (By the way, is usually Time Warner).
Other people from around the world explain please how internet pricing & bandwidth works where you live, I'm not really sure how it works in other parts of the world.
To answer the other question before this is what I pay here in Northeast Ohio (just outside of Cleveland) I am paying about $50 (34 Euros) for a 1000 kbps cable connection (of which I can get 800 kbps).
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Re: Underage Charges
Also, most people in Beaumont believe that Time Warner is absolutelty the only ISP they can get, so I think their customer base is pretty safe.
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Re: Underage Charges
Oh yeah? Where're they going to go?
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Hmm
I agree with his commenter's more to be honest (were only 2 comments when I read (well 3 but one was a double)).
This might make sense to try out in some obscure way. Maybe. Only if they are being 100% clear. And they really need to stop advertising unlimited if it won't be with what you can get in a month with that speed (ignoring the fact that the speed advertised is never what you get). Again, clarity is best.
Also, this would make more sense if there actually was a market for broadband. Most people are lucky to have more than 1 option. Most people in the cities around me (I live somewhere between Flint and Detroit) have a whopping 1 choice for Cable. Maybe 1 choice for DSL too. Maybe. Pretty much never 2 choices for Cable. And many people don't even have access to cable unless they do live close to a city / town. Its lame.
And if 5% of users use over 50% of the bandwidth as suggested (didn't read actual article, number taken from commenter) then I agree, if they lower prices for all those 95% users, I would HATE to see what they charged those 5%.
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Headline
There is no reason these companies cannot part out their network in 100mbit segments. Bandwidth is too cheap to skimp out on.
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STFU and run fiber
everything (phone, TV, whatever) will be delivered over IP at some point. you can stall for time if you want, or you can get a jump on the competition, my suggestion is to get the jump. the sooner the telcos and the cable cos move to fiber, the sooner we can put all of the capping nonsense behind us.
of course they never will. once the copper is replaced by fiber, then cable companies and phone companies will compete head to head, eliminating their respective monopolies.
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Re: Headline
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Fair Access Policies cripple innovation
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Better than the hidden caps
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Adam Thierer
Where I live I have four choices for Internet. More than most. I did a price comparison and found that Comcast is the best speed to dollar ratio. I pay $50 per month (I'm rounding up) and get 8M down advertised and 18-24M on the speakeasy speed test. (Just did a test and I'm getting 4 now) Most people here don't know there are other options besides Verizon and Comcast. For those who want to look the others are Steelcity broadband and Speakeasy.
As far as I can figure there are three ways to respond to this test:
1) Complain, send angry E-Mails, call
2) Switch ISPs
3) Download much less than normal to avoid the charges
I'd bet that the third one is the one more likely to happen. People will complain but they never put effort into sending even an E-Mail. Switching ISPs is just a pain in the but and will cost more. Downloading less is the easy option. How will Time Warner respond to option 3? How will other ISPs respond to Time Warner?
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Re: Adam Thierer
Disagree. I think this is likely to only work in markets where people have limited choice.
Where I live I have four choices for Internet. More than most.
We're not talking about just any kind of "internet" though. We're talking about high-speed (cable class) broadband. If you have four choices for that in your area it would be interesting for you to describe them.
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Re: Re: Adam Thierer
I actually meant that this will only be a good test. Not if it will be good for Time Warner.
"If you have four choices for that in your area it would be interesting for you to describe them."
I believe I did.
Comcast is cable at approx 8M down and 1M up advertised and I presently pay just under $50 (channels 2-21 included $60 Without)
Speakeasy is DSL running at $49.95/month at 1.5M down and 384K up for the lowest up to 6M down to 768K up.
SteelCity is also DSL running at $39.99/ month at 1.5M down and 128k up with one static IP.
Verizon is also DSL (duh) and I just really don't care about them.
Both SteelCity and Speakeasy are really for businesses but offer residential packages, Dial up, T1s, and T1 alternates. If you want more information you can click the links in my previous post.
Yes we have multiple dial-up services and sat. but I don't count those as options since they would never work with my VoIP nor VPNs.
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Re: Re: Re: Adam Thierer
I believe I did.
Check your post. You didn't say those were actually the ones available in your area. And to tell the truth, I thought we were talking about individual/residential rather than commercial offerings like T1 which are usually not available in residential neighborhoods. Do you live in a commercial neighborhood? Even in your area I bet all of those DSL offerings are coming over just one telco's lines. I don't really consider someone that just sells service over someone else's line to be a competitor to the owner of those lines. They're more like a partner of the local telco, not a competitor to it.
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The term Bandwidth
If I used a 56K modem connection and downloaded continuously for a month, would I exceed their "bandwidth" limit ?
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ISP's Rob U.S. Citizens
Let me offer one good reason they do this. My #1 reason ISP's throttle back and split upload and download speeds such as 5mbps download and 387kbps up to 1.2mbps upload is .......... wait for it .......... Money!
Why would you pay anyone to have a remote server or webpage if you could serve data up just as fast and with more storage from your own computer than a paid site. Don't let me leave out the free site for your web page or server. Is it free when it comes complete with unwanted but installed anyway data mining/tracking software and all the pop ups and other advertisement we just can't live without?
Here is a comparison from a few other countries, keep in mind it does not show upload vs. download speeds. While myself or my co-workers have been to many other countries with simalar speeds, we have noted the U.S. not only has the slowest download, it also has an even slower upload while other countries upload and download are matched.
I like the way ISP's say 5000 Kbps because it looks bigger and better than (5 mbps).
Rounded up to the nearest dollar:
Japan:
Fiber $37 - $40 for 100mbps (NTT West and Yahoo BB)
Cable $99 for 30mbps (J-com)
No information on wireless but it is in place.
Washington metro area:
Cable $40 for 5mbps (Verizon)
DSL $30 for 3mbps (Verizon)
Cable $53 for 8mbps (Comcast)
Cable $42 for 5mbps (Cox)
Wisconsin:
Cable $45 for Upload: 384 Kbps Download: 5 mbps (Time Warner Road Runner)
Technical Support: n/a
Email Accounts: 5 (Use YaHoo or something)
Web Space: 5 MB (Not needed with the correct software or use a free one)
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Re: ISP's Rob U.S. Citizens
The pipe is only capable of carrying so much data. People download more than they upload so the more bandwidth is allocated to downloading.
Use the numbers from your second paragraph. You have 5mbps download and 387kbps to 1.2mbps upload. Round the upload speed to 1mbps so it's easier to work with. You now have a pipe that is capable of carrying a total 6mbps. The bandwidth has to be allocated so that data can move both directions simultaneously. As a result, 5mbps is allocated for downloads because, that is the bulk of the uasage and, 1mbps is allocated for uploads.
Hope that helps clarify things a little.
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who this really effects
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Re: who this really effects
Playstation 3
Xbox 360 (300M to 2G demos)
Wii (not as big but still there)
WOW
Windows updates (big offender here)
Linux distros (I have one that's 3.2G)
iTunes (podcasts, movies, music downloads)
Napster
Sirius/XM or however many other streaming radio sites
VPN
RDT
Dameware
I can go on. You use a lot more bits than you realise.
Limiting your bit usage for P2P is like blocking youtube because of copyright infringement. You may only hear about the illegal activities on P2P (not in reality) but most of what I see on youtube is copyright infringement (I don't use it that often).
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Re: who this really effects
The P2P software for example may download from anywhere between 2kbps to your ISPs maximum limit more likely under 700kbps from what I have seen personally. Anyway MOST P2P software uploads at a small fraction of your upload speed unless you modify the software or default settings the limit is more like 40kbps. The idea behind P2P is a little bandwidth from many people so neither your bandwidth or your CPU are slowed down.
Aside from the possibilities there may be downloads that DRM (Multi medias way for you to pay for protection - see extortion.) P2P keeps people from paying ISPs money for hard drive space to get the fast downloads. The more people that share (legal files) the closer you get to downloading at the limit the ISPs forced on you without getting near your maximum upload speed.
The only way ISPs can stop people from getting high speed downloads without them getting a storage fee from us is to cap anyone that may be helping people NOT pay them for storage space to facilitate a high speed download by P2P file sharing.
In short I guess P2P is the consumers way of having a high speed web file server without paying the ISPs extra.
Think about it.
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hmmm...
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They must be stopped
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Re: They must be stopped
Go back to your shitty hole in NE and enjoy your mediocre lifestyle because I hate being behind in EVERYTHING!!!
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Re: Re: They must be stopped
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Re: Re: Re: They must be stopped
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Re: Re: Re: They must be stopped
Remember this is a global market. We must know what other standards are or fall behind. Do you want our great country to fall further behind the UK, China, or Japan?
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Re: They must be stopped
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Taking steps back.
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Probably not an infrastructure issue.
Just my 2 cents worth.
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ISP View
The "unlimited" concept is from dial-up days. Remember? You only had a few hours a month to do your business. DSL and Cable promised unlimited time. You can use it 24/7. AFAIK, they NEVER promised unlimited data. If they did they were stupid. My company always had fine print in the contract about reasonable usage. Until now, reasonable = what we feel like. Putting out hard numbers for limits was a lot of trouble. Nobody bothered much. Just send the occasional nasty letter to someone downloading 200GB from Usenet every month.
Then came bittorrent. Talk about your disruptive technologies. Bittorrent turns ANYBODY into a bandwidth black hole. They will collectively suck up all the bandwidth available. They don't even know it usually. How much did you upload through bittorrent last month? Who pays attention? Me actually. I downloaded 18 GB and uploaded 22 GB. I knew about the 18GB download, but I would have bet money my upload was like 5GB. I think its typical.
Now the sad news. For a cable ISP, bandwidth is not infinite. When a local loop gets too full, we have to split it into two smaller loops. Send out the trucks and lay some fiber. And you are always getting bills from Cisco for $30 million to upgrade all the shit between your local loop and the backbone. Beside this, the cost of shipping the data off to your cousin in DSL land is diddly.
Unfortunately for us, the bean counters on wall street don't agree with Mike about infinite bandwith either. They want to see that we can rap some knuckles to keep users in line. We should be able to really. Not everyone all the time, but somebody sometime. Oh, but actually doing it is a fucking nightmare, remember? The problem isn't the kind of people on this web site. The problem is grandma who sends 50 emails a month and gets a couple thousand spams and visits her friends on facebook a few times a week. yeah, grandmas looooove facebook. Anyway, we can't risk she gets scared that there's gonna be a $5,000 bill. She doesn't know the difference between a MB and a GB. So she goes running off to DSL land. This is the nightmare part. 98% of the users will never go over and never get a bill. 90% of them won't understand that. ALL the marketing bullshit and PR is aimed at them, not at the people here.
The last other thing is profit. There is no profit. We will lose money on this project. Unless you are like Komkast and don't care who you piss off, you are not going to make any money at this. The only reason to do it is so you can tell the wall st. guys that your users aren't taking you to the cleaners. They don't seem to mind that Cisco will take us to the cleaners for the equipment we will need to do it. But thats not my problem.
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Re: ISP View
Since you don't say where, I'll just assume it's a typical US market. If it isn't, then just apply my remarks to a typical US market instead.
If it aint fair, your competitors will be happy to let them know.
What "competitor"? Oh, you mean all those other cable companies that aren't allowed to do business in your protected area? Those competitors? Or maybe you mean the phone company if they happen to offer high speed DSL at a particular location. Yeah, just 2 companies weakly "competing". That's not much competition. I wish I was one of only two people legally allowed to do my job. I think my pay would be significantly higher.
AFAIK, they NEVER promised unlimited data.
Then I suppose you never saw the advertisements (again, referring to the typical cable company). Hence, your "AFAIK" disclaimer.
If they did they were stupid.
That's being charitable. Many would say say that were being dishonest.
My company always had fine print in the contract about reasonable usage.
Which wasn't what most of them advertised. Like the marketing dept. at Dilbert's company says: "It isn't lying, it's marketing!".
And you are always getting bills from Cisco for $30 million to upgrade all the shit between your local loop and the backbone.
Ah, yes. And all that equipment (and software) is covered by numerous patents (and copyrights) designed to created artificial scarcity and keep those prices high.
Beside this, the cost of shipping the data off to your cousin in DSL land is diddly.
Exactly. And that's what people mean when they say bandwidth is non-scarce. Once the capacity is in place, incremental costs for usage are negligible. It's kind of like air is non-scarce. But the lungs you use to breathe it definitely are scarce. Lungs represent the capacity to use air, but don't confuse the lungs with the air itself.
Unfortunately for us, the bean counters on wall street don't agree with Mike about infinite bandwith either.
That's their problem. Wall Street types love artificial scarcity. It enables their business model of buying low in one market and then reselling high in another. The Wall Streeters just want to see you enforce their business model to make them the most money. Bandwidth really is almost infinite (and I am a network engineer) even though equipment isn't. Artificial scarcity keeps it expensive. Lately though, some have been claiming that we're about to run out of capacity as if though once it's gone, it's gone and we can't make more. That's not true. We can make as much as we need.
The last other thing is profit. There is no profit. We will lose money on this project.
Then according to capitalist theory, you probably really shouldn't be doing it.
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Overage Charges
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Bandwidth is not free
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Re: Bandwidth is not free
AT&T spent the money to lay the lines initially. If Comcast or others don't wish to spend the money to lay their own then they will lose out. You got to spend money to make money. But that also falls under having to make changes instead of just riding on the momentum they already have.
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Re: Bandwidth is not free
I don't know what you're on about, but I used to run an ISP and we always got flat rate pricing, not metered. We paid for a certain capacity and were free to use that capacity fully and continuously. Same for every other ISP I knew about.
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Confused
Anyway, if you don't want people using 2,592 GB/month, then offer tiers of service - and tweak the per second 'speed' to match.
ie. offering 8 Mb/s but only 200GB/month is like selling a service that claims performance of 100 somethings per day but only effectively works 101 somethings per week. False advertisement.
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From Beaumont
There is no network congestion that I can find in this area, I maintain the same speed at all times of day, all year. This is the same with several friends from all over the area, so their reasoning of "relieving network congestion" has no basis here. It will however cause me to switch providers, or simply use my internet connection at work to get done what needs to be done.
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I'm A TimeWarner Customer Too!
Nonetheless, they're the ones offering me cable service. Which is FAST, I mean REALLY fast. And I do transfer a lot of data. And they have never cut me off, or given me an "overlimit charge" or anything like that. And it's like $35 a month -- a price I'm willing to pay for a great service.
I hope they don't go the 'overlimit' way as I would reconsider my service, but judging by the HUGE number of satellite dishes in my part of Texas they know they're already on thin ice with most people.
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Limit
What if the speed limit were 65 mph, but if you did that for 7 days in a row you got a ticket because the weekly speed limit happened to be 5,000 mpw? It's crazy.
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Metered Usage
The problem is, that's not the way market economics work (notice that I didn't call it a "free market" because it isn't). Things aren't priced on cost, they're priced based on what the market will bear. And with the lack of broadband competition that exists in the US, I'm sure the providers would just use metering to gouge consumers with few alternatives.
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The cable companies can't stand the fact that it's their turn to take a backseat to Telco on bandwidth limits. Now that fiber-optic lines can outdo them, they are the "slower" service that can't keep up. They used to beat down DSL in their commercials constantly. Now the tables have turned. The cable companies are scrambling to keep up by offering huge bandwidth packages that they know they can't really offer (unless they upgrade). They do it to keep people thinking that their service is just as fast as Fios.
So now that they offer these speeds, the usual bandwidth hogs and and practical users who are discovering more bandwidth intensive sites are flooding their network. Everything was fine here when they only offered 4-5 mb packages. The shit hit the fan when they started to offer these 15/2 plans and upgraded standard to 10/1. They knew they couldn't handle it, yet they did it anyways. marketing strategists knew Fios was a danger so they quickly tried to react to curb dissent among their customers. Yet, they haven't done the necessary upgrades to meet the demands that would be put on their Infrastructure. So now they want to blame their customers for their woes. They trying to use P2P users as a scapegoat for their own mis-management.
TBH, I feel the major reason for this is "plan" is to curb the use of movie download sites like netflixs and Apple. It's killing them that their Cable Internet service is being used to sabotage their own PPV movie revenue. This is why the numbers being talked about are 30-40 gig a month instead of something like 200 gigs a month. He talks about curbing Torrent users who use terrabytes yet they want to limit users to 1 gig a day? More like he wants to fuck over downloading sites like netflix and Apple so people will have to stick their old crappy PPV options for their media.
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Time Warner Cable Experimenting With Overage Charg
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Re: Time Warner Cable Experimenting With Overage C
Or how about this for government problems:
Just move to another country and get your friends to do the same. Don't forget to tell them why you are leaving. If enough people do it they ether will drop their ideas or separate off that part of the country that actually has a brain.
Yeah, right. I'm sure that strategy will work.
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All Aussie broadband is metered...
Some companies charge for both up/down, most just down.
When you hit the limit you can be charged (up to $150/Gb) or 'shaped', reduced to (usually) 64Kbs.
For Au$40/month I get ADSL2+ ['up to' 20Mbs / 1.5Mbs] and 7Gb peak [12noon to 2 am] + 12Gb off peak [2am to 12 noon].
You can halve the price if you want less download / bandwidth.
Seems reasonable that big users of content/bandwidth pay more than small users......
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Re: All Aussie broadband is metered...
On that basis then, it also seems reasonable that users that don't use all of their allotment should get a rebate. I've never heard of that happening though.
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Sell it Twice
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Future of media?
With a cap like this the future is certainly not digital content. If this cable internet company was NOT tied to a cable TV company with on-demand video there would be no reason at all for them to make such a decision. It is clearly an attack at streaming movies and television since those are both in a position to kill television.
As a 26-year old who group up with the Internet and watched little TV I hate cable, and lately i'm begging my wife that we drop it and put the money somewhere useful. There are only a few shows I care about, and every one of them is available online after it's aired on TV (legally). Once everything is broadcast in HD the only reason (bad reception) I personally care about cable will be gone.
Cable companies are going to hurt the evolution of the internet if we don't end up splitting them from their ISP counterparts and/or make it unlawful to make a decision so obviously linked to them.
To the post about a 17mbit connection capped at 12GB/month.... what the heck is the point of 17mbit if you're that limited!
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time warner bye bye
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Time Warner Cable: A-hole Move! ( * )
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CO-OP vs For Profit
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CO-OP vs For Profit
I'm .5 miles from verizon & TWC telco service and they refuse to provide service, satellite only option and it really sucks for the price...$89 a mth for max of 1.5 mb down and 75k up...with strict FAP policy to boot...
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