Reply With Quote
just another reason to hate time warner
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/T...Billing-101655
Time Warner Cable Expands Metered Billing
Rochester, Austin, Greensboro and San Antonio...
10:48AM Wednesday Apr 01 2009 by Karl Bode
tags: business · bandwidth · Op/Ed · cable · RoadRunner Cable
Back in January of 2008 we were the very first to report that Time Warner Cable was conducting a trial in their Beaumont, Texas market that imposed caps ranging from 5GB to 40GB on the company's existing tiers of service. More controversial perhaps was the news that trial participants would be charged $1 per every additional gigabyte consumed, a huge markup for Time Warner Cable over cost, and a first for a major US ISP.
Back in February, Time Warner Cable told us they'd be expanding this project into four additional markets, and that they'd be raising the limits on some of the trial caps in response to user complaints. This morning Time Warner Cable gave Business Week an exclusive scoop, informing them that the four markets will be Rochester, NY, Austin and San Antonio, Texas, and Greensboro, North Carolina. Business Week even gets exclusive face time with CEO Glenn Britt, so the cable boss can frame the decision to overbill you just the way he'd like it:
"We need a viable model to be able to support the infrastructure of the broadband business," Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt says in an interview. "We made a mistake early on by not defining our business based on the consumption dimension."
As usual, Britt tries to suggest that Time Warner Cable's existing flat-rate pricing model isn't "viable" enough to fund essential infrastructure upgrades. That's simply not the case. The company has been very profitable under the flat-rate model, and they've consistently found creative new ways to generate additional income, such as with DNS redirection advertising, which creates a revenue stream out of your URL typing mistakes.
In reality, Britt is pursuing metered billing because it gives him a way to monetize and/or control Internet video, which poses a very serious long term threat to his cable television revenues. The pressure to shift to metered billing also comes from investors, who obviously love the idea of charging consumers more money for the same (or less) service in an age where the cost of bandwidth and network hardware continues to drop. Keep in mind that Time Warner Cable has yet to officially announce DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades in a single market.
Where the trials go from here isn't exactly clear. Judging from the Business Week report, Time Warner has yet to increase the highest 40GB cap in these trial markets; a ridiculous decision for any carrier in the age of HD video delivery -- much less one that's facing growing compe ion from TelcoTV alternatives. "Rest assured that there will be a super-tier at approximately 100GB," a company spokesman tells me.
The question remains: will metered billing only be something Time Warner Cable imposes on less compe ive markets, where limited choices mean consumers can't vote with their wallets? Or do company executives really think they can bring 40GB (or even 100GB) caps to bear in markets where they compete with uncapped (so far) and speedier Verizon FiOS?
So far they're avoiding "big red" markets like the plague.
All five of these trial markets have limited or no FiOS availability. Rochester is home to financially-troubled Frontier, who (judging from posts to our forums) can barely offer consumers more than 3Mbps, and has been exploring 5GB caps. The other Time Warner Cable trial markets are in AT&T territory. AT&T is also testing metered billing, imposing caps from 20 to 150GB in two trial markets, charging customers $1 per gigabyte in overage fees.
And there's the rub: a national migration from flat rate to metered billing will only succeed if carriers work together to ins ute obnoxiously low caps and painfully expensive overage fees. Otherwise, the un-metered compe or in a metered market can highlight how Time Warner Cable, Frontier or AT&T is being a cheapskate, charging users an insanely high markup on bandwidth over cost. Of course, if you don't have many other viable compe ors (and change the laws to keep it that way), you can do, well, whatever the you'd like.
In markets where compe ors aren't playing along with the idea, or the carrier faces pressure from municipal fiber builds, Time Warner Cable's decision could border on seppuku.
just another reason to hate time warner
Grande is much better ....
there is no reason to discriminate against Time Warner
Ugh. I told my roommate we shouldn't have switched to RoadRunner. I wonder if he has some sort of contract. I hope not, so we can go back to ATT.
I have AT & T. I guess they will be next.
they better not.
Well I hope they don't. My sister's keep telling us to get their U-VERSE. TW's digital cable sucks donkey balls sometimes.
Why the do they not have FOX HD. I hate TW.
I don't know, but I never stop on that channel.
this is incredibly lame. my roomate and i could hit 40GB per month just playing team fortress 2
I work from home and do a lot of emailing and research. Between that and catching up with tv shows on hulu and stuff, I can't imagine what the overage would be. And that doesn't include my roommate, who recently (accidentally, I think) admitted his fondness for internet porn
I'm switching to ATT. those caps. I probably download about 40GB worth of stuff a week.
yes there is. They don't have NFL Network, they jack up prices without warning and they have poor customer service.
Big difference between that and the way you discriminate against different races.
grande>
Ive heard nothing but good things about grande. I wish they were in my area.
Grande doesn't serve me neighborhood.
What is a better alternative for the Dallas market?
I don't watch that much TV but I am thinking of going Uverse once my price thingy is over with TW.
I don't know about the "better" part but Comcast is out in that area.
i didn't enter into a pricelock agreement and pay for RR turbo to have a cap imposed on me. I'm gonna get out of this if it's for real. U-Verse is offering $200 rebate anyway.
Comcast traded most of their Texas markets to TW for markets further east.
The only real presence is near Houston.
Change that. They do still have a small market in Dallas but it doesn't service a very large area.
Last edited by dimsah; 04-01-2009 at 02:06 PM.
I just talked to a TW rep and they said that they don't know when it's actually going to start. He also said it's only in the planning stages so it may be a couple of months before they even go ahead with it.
them either way.
looks like i have to cut back xbox live.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
