Time Warner Cable is going to meter you and charge you more

[Timeline]

Today it was announced they plan to charge for every gig over a certain amount, like 1gb.

It's a good time to loose TWC and go back to DSL I think.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Today it was announced they plan to charge for every gig over a certain amount, like 1gb.

It's a good time to loose TWC and go back to DSL I think.

The cable companies have been sticking it to customers for way too long. That's why I have DSL packaged with HD satellite, cell phones, long distance and local service with ATT. With the reduced package rate, I pay less than HD cable with internet for all that stuff. Been like this for over a year and it rocks. Never down.

And living in earthquake country (woohoo!) if power goes down for a few days, I don't have to worry about the battery in my cable modem to make calls and can still get internet if the phone is working and my APS unit can run the modem for a few minutes.

No - it's time to stick it to the cable companies for a change. Go DSL, man. Check out the AT & T packages as well. You save a bunch of cash if you have Cingular as well.

[Timeline]

Thanks. For me though, I was trying to loose the land line completely because I have to move in a few months. I was just shocked they would try and do this in this economy. HERE'S THE ARTICLE:

Time Warner Cable To Try Metering New Subscriber Internet Use

Jun 3, 2008 11:06:11 (ET)

NEW YORK (AP)--Time Warner Cable Inc. (TWC) plans to start metering new subscribers - charging them for Internet usage above a monthly allowance - beginning Thursday in Beaumont, Texas.

Those who go over the allowed time will be charged $1 per gigabyte, a Time Warner Cable executive told The Associated Press.

Such 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.

Just 5% 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.

"We think it's the fairest way to finance the needed investment in the infrastructure," Leddy said.

Metered usage is common overseas, and other U.S. cable providers are looking at ways to rein in heavy users. Most have download caps, but some keep the caps secret so as not to alarm the majority of users, who come nowhere close to the limits. 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.

Phone companies are less concerned about congestion and are unlikely to impose metered usage on DSL customers, because their networks are structured differently.

Time Warner Cable had said in January that it was planning to conduct the trial in Beaumont, but did not give any details.

Monday, 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.

A possible stumbling block for Time Warner Cable is that customers have had little reason so far to pay attention to how much they download from the Internet, or know how much traffic makes up a gigabyte. That uncertainty could scare off new subscribers.

Those who mainly do Web surfing or email 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.

Time Warner Cable subscribers will be able to check out their data consumption on a "gas gauge" on the company's Web page.

The company won't apply the gigabyte surcharges for the first two months. It has 90,000 customers in the trial area, but only new subscribers will be part of the trial.

Billing by the hour was common for dial-up service in the U.S. until AOL - operated by Time Warner Inc. (TWX) - introduced an unlimited-usage plan in 1996. Flat-rate, unlimited-usage plans have been credited with encouraging consumer Internet use by making billing easy to understand.

"The metered Internet has been tried and tested and rejected by the consumers overwhelmingly since the days of AOL," information-technology consultant George Ou told the Federal Communications Commission at a hearing on ISP practices in April.

Metered billing could also put a crimp in the plans of services like Apple Inc.'s (AAPL) iTunes that use the Internet to deliver video. DVD-by-mail pioneer Netflix Inc. (NFLX) just launched a TV set-top box that receives an unlimited stream of Internet video for as little as $8.99 per month.

Comcast Corp. (CMCSK), the country's largest cable company, has suggested that it may cap usage at 250 gigabytes per month. Bend Cable Communications in Bend, Ore., used to have multitier bandwidth allowances, like the ones Time Warner Cable will test, but it abandoned them in favor of an across-the-board 100-gigabyte cap. Bend charges $1.50 per extra gigabyte consumed in a month.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 03, 2008 11:06 ET (15:06 GMT)

[blue]

This is absolute bullsh••. This has nothing to do with "fair usage." If it did they would lower the base price to accommodate the majority of subscribers who don't use their connection much, in addition to the extra charges for those who do. No, this is all about them cashing in as more and more people move away from traditional sources of entertainment and go to the internet to get their TV and movies on.

If they are concerned with fair usage, maybe they should charge me less for watching only 3 or 4 of the thousands of channels I currently have access to. Apparently that kind of price structuring wouldn't work into their model so well.

I've always hated paying those bastards. It's time to move on.

[kassonica]

Thats harsh

Both downloads and uploads will count toward the monthly cap

Are they for real

Hope this doesn't come into effect in Australia Uploads are not counted on any internet plan here that I'm aware of.

[txa1265]

Boy ... we just moved from Mass to New York, stuck with Verizon DSL for my wife's email account ... had thought of switching to Time Warner for the speed (DSL in Mass was quicker). This pretty well nails that idea ... as well as my wife seeing a survey putting TWC near bottom in terms of customer service.

Now if they had local channels with DirecTV - or FiOS - here we could dump them altogether ...

[jliechty]

While the motivation for usage charges would be understandable in other contexts, they clearly lack any good reason for the absurdly low usage caps and ridiculously high charge per gigabyte. I'm happy to be on 6mbit AT&T DSL for less per month than the cheapest cable service in my area. The only concern I have is that even DSL providers may adopt this price gouging scheme if TW and other cable companies prove that they can get away with it.

[James Steele]

Geez... that sucks. I have Cox cable which isn't so bad and they have tiered charges for service, but the usage thing is crappy. I switched to DSL for a while, but unfortunately my home was a good distance from the nearest switch or whatever, and my bandwidth was anemic, and I couldn't stand it and switched back to cable.

At some point in the future they may get better service out here and I'll jump ship again.

What's really bad is I have a neighbor nearby who has cable and an unsecured wireless router that I can pick up the signal in one room of my house and weak signal at that. In my weaker moments I've considered getting a boosting antenna and some sort of repeater apparatus to freeload off him. Yes... I know... it would be wrong. So I don't. But some days I'm sorely tempted.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

FWIW, the city of Burbank (and a few other cites around the USA) offer FREE wireless internet. I'm close enough to the city center to pick it up, but it's not reliable for daily business use.

Still, it points out how cheap it is to actually provide the service.

[James Steele]

I wish they'd do that here, but I'm sure the city council is in bed with the powerful types who own Cox Cable. Would be awesome if there were more civic internet projects.

[blue]

What's really bad is I have a neighbor nearby who has cable and an unsecured wireless router that I can pick up the signal in one room of my house and weak signal at that. In my weaker moments I've considered getting a boosting antenna and some sort of repeater apparatus to freeload off him. Yes... I know... it would be wrong. So I don't. But some days I'm sorely tempted.

You might get away with it…until he starts getting heavily surcharged for extra usage.

[Frodo]

Seems like it's a growing trend:

New Comcast traffic management targets users, not protocols

http://www.macworld.com/article/133775/ ... t_p2p.html

[Frodo]

So, this seems to be a genuine business trend to charge users for any and every little thing possible.

How's this one for airlines:

New fees could include charging passengers "by the pound,"

http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/30/news/ec ... topstories

[MIDI Life Crisis]

So, this seems to be a genuine business trend to charge users for any and every little thing possible.

How's this one for airlines:

New fees could include charging passengers "by the pound,"

We should apply these concepts to our work:

Perhaps we could start charging producers and directors for all the false turns they sometimes make us take? Or all the dumb things they do to impede the process? Like taking a 5.1 mix to Best Buy to "test it out" and then spending a few weeks and several thousand dollars to "verify" the integrity of the mix after they've signed off on it. Really happened to me - recently.

[kgdrum]

i use TWC here in NYC and man they suck..................... if they go with this new model,i am wondering how much using Vonage(3 years and pretty cool) adds to the internet usage to the equation.
a new ruling in NY might open up the ability in NYC to have a choice between TW and Verizon Fios(which I hear is very good) but I hated Verizon for my land line service and do not like Verizon wireless all that much........
KG