Time Warner Cable cancels usage caps

[Kaervak]

I don't really care if an ISP has a cap as long as it's resonable, but with TWC they're absurd. They're charging more money for less service compared to their competitors. It would be like buying a BMW for $5,000 or a Geo Metro for $10,000. Anyone that isn't severely brain damaged can see that's not a smart business plan.

Right now I pay around $50 a month for TWC's 8mb service with no cap at all, I get the speeds advertised and I download about 60GB a month of various audio/video podcasts, browsing, TV/Hulu, Youtube & system updates. In order to keep my current level of download limits, I'll have to upgrade to their Turbo tier which is currently an additional $10 (that will increase undoubtedly) which will increase my monthly bill to over $140 for RoadRunner and TV service. Wide Open West in my area offers the exact same package as TWC does now, but with no cap and for $100 a month. WOW is more service for less money, while TWC is more money for less service. And TWC is telling everyone that is what the customers want? Really, pay more and receive less?

 

[Modelworks]

I'm still waiting for Spidey to explain why they deserve more money when they never delivered on promises that cost the taxpayers $200 Billion. Google 1996 deregulation , read about all the promises they made to get more money and did nothing they promised.

 

[Wyndru]

Originally posted by: aldamon

This has been said multiple times, but here goes again: Since I'm a DirecTV subscriber, I was getting screwed with RR @ $49.99. EL is $29.99 for six months and then $41.99 after that. Even if EL implements caps, a savings of $8 a month after the promo period buys me another 8GB of cap space. I completed my switch tonight. Painless after I got a competent tech on the second try.

Understood, and I agree, it's just a lot of people are under the assumption that Earthlink will not be enforcing caps, which doesn't look like it is the case. But your right, the $8 savings a month is worth the change on it's own, provided the service is the same quality, which I assume it isn't throttled or anything.

Does anyone know if TWC's phone service (VOIP) and on demand video usage counts toward the caps?

I use vonage currently, so I'm sure they will count that. I'm gonna miss shoutcast though

 

[Anubis]

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: AstroManLuca

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: Special K

Then why does Comcast offer a very generous cap of 250 GB, whereas TWC offers a measly 40 GB?

Economies of scale, operational costs, depreciation of existing gear. It's all accounting. Capital expense and operational expense, the models are nothing new, one is doing it better than the other.

More like "seeing how much they can dick the consumer in a competition-free environment."

What the hell are you talking about? Pick up the phone and there are probably a half dozen companies that will GLADLY provide you internet service.

were i live no there are not

sat and dial up do not count TW is the ONLY high speed provider. this is the same for many people

 

[kevnich2]

Originally posted by: Anubis

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: AstroManLuca

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: Special K

Then why does Comcast offer a very generous cap of 250 GB, whereas TWC offers a measly 40 GB?

Economies of scale, operational costs, depreciation of existing gear. It's all accounting. Capital expense and operational expense, the models are nothing new, one is doing it better than the other.

More like "seeing how much they can dick the consumer in a competition-free environment."

What the hell are you talking about? Pick up the phone and there are probably a half dozen companies that will GLADLY provide you internet service.

were i live no there are not

sat and dial up do not count TW is the ONLY high speed provider. this is the same for many people

Yeah I know a lot of people that only have ONE option for broadband access. And guess where TWC is actually putting these caps in right now...you guessed it, In areas where there is little or no competition so the customer just has to suffer through it.

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: kevnich2

Yeah I know a lot of people that only have ONE option for broadband access. And guess where TWC is actually putting these caps in right now...you guessed it, In areas where there is little or no competition so the customer just has to suffer through it.

Nonsense. You can get baseband just about anywhere. It doesn't HAVE to be broadband, there are plenty of ways to get internet service.

 

[sonoma1993]

Originally posted by: Anubis

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: AstroManLuca

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: Special K

Then why does Comcast offer a very generous cap of 250 GB, whereas TWC offers a measly 40 GB?

Economies of scale, operational costs, depreciation of existing gear. It's all accounting. Capital expense and operational expense, the models are nothing new, one is doing it better than the other.

More like "seeing how much they can dick the consumer in a competition-free environment."

What the hell are you talking about? Pick up the phone and there are probably a half dozen companies that will GLADLY provide you internet service.

were i live no there are not

sat and dial up do not count TW is the ONLY high speed provider. this is the same for many people

my area pretty much the same boat.. It's either comcast for cable or AT&T for dsl, or dial up

My grandpa who lives about a 1 1/2 miles outside of town.. He can't get AT&T dsl, it not offer out by his house even though he only 1 1/2 miles from town. His broadband options are either comcast or going with Satelite. So currently he stuck on dialup until he decided if he wants comcast.

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: Ilmater
I'll just say this: I work at a wireless phone company, and we (like everyone else) have a 5GB cap on our connection card plans that used to be unlimited. I'm sure all the carriers did it for the same reason we did... we simply were losing money on the small portion of customers that use that much. I'm also sure that Time Warner and others are facing the same capacity issues. I use a TON of bandwidth at home like the rest of you, but think about it:

If you use more gas, it costs more, right?
If you eat more food, it costs more, right?
If you use more electricity, it costs more, right?

I know it sucks, and I wish this wasn't happening, but the fact is, it was pretty much inevitable.

its not comparable. food and gas if comparable would cost fractions of a cent per gallon by now because bits always get cheaper to deliver. if only!!!


wireless is a special case where bandwidth is shared and very limited, not comparable to regular broadband.

 

[Doggiedog]

Looks like they are scrapping the Caps!!

Cap Scrap

 

[kevnich2]

Originally posted by: Doggiedog
Looks like they are scrapping the Caps!!

Cap Scrap

I guess the thousand odd calls from people didn't help with that. Hopefully they get the message that a 40gb cap isn't what most people consider normal usage.

 

[shoRunner]

increase bandwidth, but create a cap....i'll stick with unlimited 6-10mbps thankyouverymuch

 

[FeuerFrei]

Originally posted by: Modelworks
4/10/2009

Update on the TWC caps plans. Apparently they are now doing it because , other providers are doing it ! If they can make more money, why shouldn't we !

...

If we don?t act, consumers? Internet experience will suffer. Sitting still is not an option. That?s why we?re beginning the consumption based billing trials. It?s important to stress that they are trials. The feedback we?ve received from our customers has been very helpful. We?ve made changes to the terms in our current and upcoming trial markets as follows:

? To accommodate lighter Internet users and those who need a lower priced option, we are introducing a 1 GB per month tier offering speeds of 768 KB/128 KB for $15 per month. Overage charges will be $2 per GB per month. Our usage data show that about 30% of our customers use less than 1 GB per month.

...

Landel Hobbs
COO
Time Warner Cable

whoa, 30%(!) of customers sign up for Roadrunner cable internet and only download 1 GB or less in a MONTH?!
What a waste.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

Originally posted by: Doggiedog
Looks like they are scrapping the Caps!!

Cap Scrap

Good news! I'm not switching back, though.

 

[Doggiedog]

Now the article says they TWC is scrapping some plans not all.

Get your facts straight!

 

[frostedflakes]

"It is clear from the public response over the last two weeks that there is a great deal of misunderstanding about our plans to roll out additional tests on consumption-based billing," Britt said in a statement.

Lol, there's no misunderstanding. Even the non tech savvy customers see this tiered service for exactly what it is: Charging customers more for less.

 

[kevnich2]

Capping users wouldn't be so bad if they would at least make the cap sizes REASONABLE. What about this do they not understand. I know spidey doesn't seem to understand it. Bandwidth does not cost $1/gb to deliver. And sorry but the argument that they're losing money doesn't hold much clout when their own financial publishings say that they made 1 billion in profit last year, the expenses for delivering broadband to customers has gone down in the last year while subscribers have gone up 10%. That tells me they're MAKING profit, not losing anything.

Anyone who actually looks at all these figures knows the actual reason they're wanting to put caps in place: to protect their bread and butter product of TV as internet video streaming is competing with that.

All this is going to lead to is a tiered internet where media sites pay ISP's so their members can stream internet video without it counting against their bandwidth, basically the ISP is going to double dip, charge the customer an access fee for internet and charge the media company to be able to deliver that to the customer.

 

[Nocturnal]

I wonder if spidey07 punched a hole through several walls last night when the news that TWC wasn't going to cap everyone rang out?

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: Nocturnal
I wonder if spidey07 punched a hole through several walls last night when the news that TWC wasn't going to cap everyone rang out?

While it's fun to make fun of me for my inside knowledge of this stuff I don't work for any of these companies, I just understand what is going on and sell my services to help them navigate...that's my job. I don't get angry at all at the news, just more work for me and work = money.

 

[lupi]

Was listening to a WSJ story about this this morning. Best part was when the talked about how these additional charge for capped levels at the core have absolutely nothing to do with internet service; it's just a way of collecting more revenue to offset those customers who may drop cable service and just keep internet as more tv programming ends up as viewable online.

 

[PokerGuy]

More and more regular folks (as opposed to us geeks) are getting involved in more video/audio streaming and multimedia stuff online, pushing up their usage. Lets face it, the average non-computer-nerd is not going to want to have some application to run to try and keep track of how much bandwidth they've used over the month etc, it's a major hassle. Either the ISP makes the caps such that the average person will never even get close to hitting them, or they can't use caps. If they try with these low caps (like TWC did), they're going to get smacked by the public. Heck, if enough people get ticked off, they could get their congressional rep to introduce legislation, which could reallly hurt the ISP.....

 

[Denithor]

I kinda like the concept of paying a connection fee + usage fee. As long as neither is too high it could work very well for the whole spectrum of users. Choose your connection speed (teired price points for connection) and then a static fee per GB.

 

[lupi]

Originally posted by: Denithor
I kinda like the concept of paying a connection fee + usage fee. As long as neither is too high it could work very well for the whole spectrum of users. Choose your connection speed (teired price points for connection) and then a static fee per GB.

And that would never work for the same reason you're not selecting cable packages by which channels you want.

 

[Anubis]

Originally posted by: frostedflakes
"It is clear from the public response over the last two weeks that there is a great deal of misunderstanding about our plans to roll out additional tests on consumption-based billing," Britt said in a statement.

Lol, there's no misunderstanding. Even the non tech savvy customers see this tiered service for exactly what it is: Charging customers more for less.

yep, people are not as stupid as they seem sometimes

 

[Aikouka]

Originally posted by: spidey07
While it's fun to make fun of me for my inside knowledge of this stuff I don't work for any of these companies, I just understand what is going on and sell my services to help them navigate...that's my job. I don't get angry at all at the news, just more work for me and work = money.

I still think you don't get it. People aren't flabbergasted at "your knowledge", they're appalled by how you can honestly defend this. If you would open your eyes, you'd see that quite a few people here (myself included) even mentioned that caps would be fine if they are adequate. The level that Time Warner Cable was aiming for was incredibly stringent on their customers and compared to other ISP rivals, they were proposing an incredibly poor line-up of services.

Your response to this was a silly remark such as "go with someone else." When they told you that their only decent option was Time Warner, rather than taking off those rose-colored glasses of yours, you told them to buy a dedicated line!

You ought to run for office, spidey, because you sure are good at ignoring the actual issue.

 

[Phokus]

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: Nocturnal
I wonder if spidey07 punched a hole through several walls last night when the news that TWC wasn't going to cap everyone rang out?

While it's fun to make fun of me for my inside knowledge of this stuff I don't work for any of these companies, I just understand what is going on and sell my services to help them navigate...that's my job. I don't get angry at all at the news, just more work for me and work = money.

No, it's fun to make fun of you because you THINK you know what you're talking about but you're completely wrong.