Is Time Warner Telling Customers No Caps, No Broadband Upgrades?
from the there's-usually-a-word-for-this-sort-of-thing dept
Time Warner Cable last week backed off its plans to implement metered broadband plans in several cities, at least until it could figure out how to pitch the plans without attracting so much bad press. But now an interesting post over at GigaOM says that Time Warner is now also rethinking rolling out network upgrades in the cities where it wanted to install the broadband caps. The implication seems to be that the company is saying it's fine if consumers in those places want to complain about the caps, but then they shouldn't expect TWC to upgrade their broadband networks and offer higher speeds. Time Warner and other ISPs like to trot out the line that the cost of providing broadband is surging alongside traffic growth, but it seems that just the opposite is actually happening. So here's some horse-trading for Time Warner: if you don't want to upgrade your networks, or if you want to implement caps, that's fine. But don't expect your customers to hang around.
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Filed Under: broadband tiers, caps, upgrades
Companies: time warner cable
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Re:
My option is either satellite or Time Warner.
I call Verizon just about every month or so, and they have finally told me "we have no idea when we'll be in your area". The frustrating part is that 5 minutes away from me they offer services! I was told that every town has to sign a control with a telecom company and because these towns don't want to have wires all over the place they generally stick to one company. That sounds like horsecrap to me - but whatever the reason - it better change!
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And it's a perfectly reasonable way to behave . . .
These guys have monopolies or duopolies with huge, like-minded companies. Why would they do anything to improve the customer experience? They know that they'll lose a percentage of their customers to the competition, and the competition will lose a percentage to them.
I speak from my own experience. I left Comcast for AT&T U-Verse partly because of the 250GB cap (which I never come close to) ... and what do I see now but a tiered pricing plan in the works from AT&T.
My choices are ... AT&T DSL (at 1024/768k, not an option), AT&T U-Verse, or Comcast High-Speed Internet.
I miss the days of Speakeasy being available as a result of appropriate regulation to encourage competition. I hate government regulation as a solution to problems (because eventually the stakeholders...AT&T, Comcast, TWC...take them over and bend them to their will), but I haven't heard a better idea, yet.
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Re: And it's a perfectly reasonable way to behave . . .
The way I see it, the communications provide markets (ISP, Cable, Voice) are sick because you have to run cable to provide service. It's a fantastically high natural barrier to competition because even if there were enough companies that were well-capitalized enough to do it, no customer wants their front lawn dug up 5 times so 5 different provides can each run their own cable to have a crack at your business. Therefore, unless someone develops a practical wireless alternative, most people will have the phone company and the cable company (the two that existed before the internet exploded) and that's it.
By argument ad absurdum, let's imagine that every store chain had their own incompatible road systems, so that in order to start shopping at Target instead of Walmart, you would have to sign a multi-year contract, contractors would show up at your house to rip out the old road and "install" the new one that routes you to the new stores. In a sense, that would be the same expensive, exclusive and insane system we now have for communications!
So, how do we fix it?
My idea is this: have local municipal government seize control of all local fiber and copper cabling under eminent domain. If they decide they do not want to operate the network infrastructure themselves, they can contract it out to a third party, but the community would retain ownership.
Then, any provider that wants to get into the market to provide service (voice, video, data) can do so withouth having to duplicate that infrastructure. The provide would pay a usage fee/tax to the city for the use of the network (passed on to the customer in their bill) which would be used for capacity, maintenance and upgrades.
PRO:
* True competition with the return of mom & pop ISPs able to provide truly competitive broadband service.
* The community Network infrastructure is built up where the community wants it, not the telco.
* Should be cheaper for everyone because the required infrastructure is only built once and then shared.
* Telco, Cable and big ISP influence is diminished because they are now commodity carriers like everyone else. (Because lets face it, that's what it is - commodity service. Who doesn't get unlimited flat-rate long distance calling in the US anymore?)
CON:
* Your muny government has to be smart, refuse bribes and write any sourcing contracts to make sure they don't duplicate the current situation. That alone will sink the deal in a LOT of places.
On a tangent, let me add that even though this sounds like socialism, it's no more so than the common water system. This market is broken. If "free-market" conservatives want to gripe about socialism, they need to explain why they are so willing to promote healthy oligopolies instead of healthy markets.
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Local Competition
"I pay to get big, so i can make money off your lack of choice"
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# Collusion
* Formation of cartels
* Price fixing
* Bid rigging
# Product bundling and tying
# Refusal to deal
* Group boycott
# Exclusive dealing
# Dividing territories
# Conscious parallelism
# Predatory pricing
# Misuse of patents and copyrights
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Re: inc
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Re: Re: inc
Maybe not at present, but they could easily be crafted into such in the future. For example, the incumbent provider shapes the competing service but not theirs.
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Not necessarily Mr. Coward
I'm a Road Runner customer but will not be the minute that they envoke these caps. There are other companies I can turn to but will have to trade my 15 Mbps down/ 2 Mbps up speed for somewhere closer to 6 Mbps/512 Kbps. But that my choice and I will gladly do it. I know the real reason behind the caps, they are trying to push customers back to their video and VOIP services. They have lost so many customers to MagicJack and Vonage, and video customers now use Hulu, Netflix, and Gooogle Video. By charging for all that bandwidth it will be cheaper to switch back to TWC's Digital Phone and their cable services. That's what they hope at least. So we have choices, San Antonio is a big place. But more customer will leave all together than will switch back to Time Warner's other services, that is for sure. That is why they shelved the testing, they read these comments and forums and they know we are pissed.
InanimateOne
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Re: Not necessarily Mr. Coward
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Hurry up guys...
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However, all-you-can-eat plans really do seem to help drive innovation, considering how few net innovations come out of countries that tend to have caps, so no caps seems best. These companies keep telling us what a tiny fraction of customers would even ever hit their cap -- well then how is it worth the cost, trouble, and ill will from capping them and making everyone worry about their usage? The more they talk nonsense the more they confirm the true goal is to thwart competition with their own video and VoIP services.
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Monopoly
Now, you go east to Syracuse, or West to Buffalo and both of those cities have Verizon, and are offer their new FIOS service. Time Warner is having a tough time in those markets. So far, Frontier has been able to keep Verizon out the phone market here, but the minute they get a foothold, TW & Frontier are going to have to do some serious scrambling to keep customers.
(Frontier is running a program now where they give you a Dell Atom 9" laptop as long as you sign up for them and Dish network - for 2 yrs.)
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Cap rates.
Give options for min/max upload download rates, min guaranteed and max capped per plan.
Want to download 3 HD movies at once, you pay more.
Satisfied with youtube video and small uploads, not so much.
Nobody likes tracking monthly download amounts, but people may be ok with rate caps. Dialup vs Cable.
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What are my Options ? NONE !!!
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movies
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