Time Warner Cable Expands Internet Usage Pricing

I had to be away from the house and my machine last night. I am so glad to see that I am not the only one upset by this move.

Greed, greed, greed, is the name of this game. I wondered what was up with their "new" speed offers a couple months ago. I needed to trim my budget and had my cable downgraded to the most basic package, only local channels for less than $10 a month. She told me that in addition to regular RR there was a "new" slower speed and a "new" higher speed. I think that too many were satisfied with regular speed and they couldn't generate enough new revenue.

I am one of those computer users that wouldn't be able to tell you what a KB or MB is and am basically clueless about anything other than operating this thing. They can say it is a test all they want but the woman I spoke with said this is no test and the new prices will become permanent in the fall. We are going to have our usage monitored for 3 months to give us an idea which tier and then it is implemented!

For me this likely will not be that bad, I think. I don't play much on line only stupid poppit, but I do spend hours watching youtube and other streaming videos and I think this is where it will really hurt. I am hoping that my ad block plus and my noscript may keep the background usage down but I have no clue.

I am very glad that others see this the way that I do. As this progresses I will let you all know. IF there are any members here that are from the other "test" cities, please let us or me know how the transition is going for you. I can't imagine any other corners I can cut to make this little Disability check stretch but this is very bad for me. red

This is crap.

What about people who research film or photography?

What about audio and video produced by non-profit organizations, or even released into the public domain?

What about online gamers?

What about people who engage in any kind of online collaborative effort, like using and sharing Linux distributions?

What about people who simply pilfer through text documents or aggregate feeds on the Internet for fits and giggles?

All of these people would have to pay additional fees on top of the basic fees to access whatever services they use on the Internet.

My old room-mate had a great set up he purchased the top cable package set up a wireless router and opened it up to his neighbors and he had like 8 people who he charged $15.00 each and he made money off of it. I guess the companies are trying to get ahead of the pirate curb.

For us poor slobs like me with not much money and no real knowledge of how to do anything but use one of these, the internet might get priced out.

Something that is so useful to mankind, that can take any person and provide them with access to all the literature and history out there and to make it so expensive that only the middle or those with a higher income can access. This is my lifeline in so many ways, a shame that because a corporation wants more profit they are pulling this. I have no doubt this is the face of the future!

If everyone cancelled their Internet service for 30 days all heck would break loose. The idiots responsible for this brainiac idea will be fired and apologies sent out to everyone.

How in the world could one go about something like that? With my city being one of the test areas I would love to organize something here. This is just ridiculous to me that because I love to view things on line that I am going to now have to pay more than the $40 it costs me already, and pay a usage charge for how ever many whatever you call those things..kb's?...if I go over their set amount. ridiculous

We have had cost going up every few months here, What I did was check out DSL. I had it a few years back and it was beyond bad.

But when I checked with the phone company I had a surprise, they had brought the speeds up near to what cable was. And it held day and night unlike cable where the speed would drop quite a bit at times of the day.

Also I got a very good deal, so do not fail to check your phone company as they may have upgraded there systems and you could get DSL for a good price and with out the mess that is coming about with some Cable company's.

I have TWC so I guess thier going to get me too.However I'll move to dialup and just do e-mail online.I rarely watch tv.Most of my day is spent right here at the computer but if they think I'm going to pay more than I pay now I have news for them.I can find other things to do.

reply to post by redhead57



So... we will be paying for the AD content on every page one brings up...

i have noticed a lot of extra bandwith used by the ADs to a cruddy
200 words of text in an article...

the 'NEWS' content is at most 20% of any page, site, article...

will TWC Adjust the pricing accordingly??

I Doubt It !

the danf www.tribalfusion sneaks their pop-'unders' on a lot of formerly
Advertisement free URLs... like my daily-jig-saw-puzzles that used to load quickly, now drags on until many times the Java-script download timer
promps me to re-load because time has expired..

needless-to-say-... i vow to never get a 'movie rental account' from
u-know-who.


TWC, along with the other cable providers.. were awarded exclusive +
monopolistic 'territories'... so there should be something that the Legal-Eagles can sue about to keep these ISPs from charging on bandwidth useage (i use Earthlink on the cables owned/operated by TWC...
for a little savings )


sheeze... they get enough profit already, for shoddy service,
(because as they build new connections & cable trunks, my service goes to a crawl many, many, many times each month)

This is all because the MPAA/RIAA feel we all owe them. They believe that everyone in the world is out to pirate the copyrighted material of the companies they represent. These people are little more than legal gangsters and they will stop at nothing to make sure SOMEONE pays for their "losses" from pirated audio/movies. Whether you have ever pirated something or not, doesn't concern them in the least. In their eyes, we're all guilty and should have to pay.


TheAssociate

reply to post by redhead57


i just wanted to let you know that all is not lost


time warner may be defeated on this one

i really think they made their biggest mistake by "testing" this in rochester

rochester is a very powerful and underestimated city

many things have been accomplished here through the city

its sad, many people talk about how they have tier pricing in other areas, within the states and other countries. other countries without the infrastructure available, it makes sense and is much more understandable that the cost is higher, is it right? no, but is it understandable? yes do a degree

but here in most areas of the states, for the most part, it seems highly likely that the infrastructure is there and so is the money and the market, maybe the infrastructure needs to be updated or even further expanded, but all business must expand to meet the growing needs of a growing civilization

and it seems that the people in rochester wont stand down as easily as the rest of the areas where this happened

many in the rochester community are very organized

the deaf community for one, and i applaud them for really putting the gun to time warners head

in this article here, it shows that enough people are threatening time warner and making them very nervous about losing a large amount of business, they have already begun to back track slightly and are rethinking their moves

www.whec.com...
(article about time warner changing their initial plans for the tier system)(small battle victory)

if enough people work together to petition, protest, and even boycott them, then they will be forced to further "revamp" their ideas


i also urge everyone in the areas affected to let time warner know verbally and/or in writing that if they decide to go ahead with the plans that you will be boycotting them, it sounds a bit "childish" in a way for a single person to think they matter, but if enough of those "single people" do that, and really cancel the day the plan starts, time warner will be hit huge and they will have no choice but to concede to the will of the people

in my opinion, people should not just boycott their internet, but also their phone and cable service, there are alternatives for those also, maybe slightly more expensive then what you are paying now, less of a high quality service, but id rather bite the bullet and go to frontier phone, earthlink internet or even some satellite company for the utilities in order to make a stance instead of just allowing this capped internet to take a strong hold in our future
right now can people make do with capped pricing?
im sure we could adapt and get by
can the future with increasing technologies, and things on the internet that consume an ever increasing amount of bandwidth exist with this capped pricing? i highly doubt it

20 years ago people couldnt imagine transferring a gigabyte from computer to computer, in 20 years from now what will we be transferring? will 100 gigs be common? 1000? whats above a gig?


boycotting time warner wont be easy or fun
the alternative choices in rochester are not good to say the least, but there are choices
obviously slower choices, and even other companies who have discussed caps also

but the key to victory is to not concede or give up, and do what you say you will do,
dont let the company be the boss, as its the consumer who makes the company and without the consumer the company would cease to exist, thats why "the customers Always right"


the worst thing that can happen, is time warner rolls out the pricing, and everyone whos been raising a uproar, just sits back and takes it

everyone who complains needs to boycott time warner if the time comes and if that happens, then i guarantee that policy wont last, and i really dont see it lasting, especially with all the outspoken people that have already began to fight back with time warner

i also just want to go on record and say im very impressed with the local rochester news stations, not the democrat and chronicle newspaper, as they seem to be paid off by time warner and arent covering the situation very well to let people know whats happening, but even r news whos parent company is time warner, are covering the outrage to the situation, and they are doing it pretty unbiasedly for the most part, and in our times of such overwhelming conspiracies in the media, its nice to see all the local news stations actually airing the real voice of the people and the communities concerns rather then just reading the planned statement send down by the company big wigs

Originally posted by camain
look, realistically, there is a reason for this, 90% of the bandwidth is consumed by 20% of the population. It costs money to bring a product to market, IF you like streaming video, playing wow, and surfing porn, realistically, you are going to pay more, and you should pay more, then grandma who uses it to check her email once a week.

I have no doubt though that they will roll out with a tier2 system where you get some many gigs for free, then you pay 1-2 dollars for each gig over that. This is whats realistic. Most movies you rent are 3-4 gig. That means if you downloaded a movie off the internet you would pay this amount.

I personnelly have no doubt that when they start rolling this service out, they will also roll out there centralized movie servers(what your DVR's connect to do insta-play) in a modified form, to allow yo,u for a subscription, to watch all the movies that are on that anyway. This saves them money, becuase the data isn't traversing the internet, which costs them money to supply.

The bottom line is yes it sucks if you eat up all the bandwidth in your neighborhood, but if your jo-mama, that hardly uses it, like most TW customers, you will get a discount in price. Its better for them to charge you, then to just cut you off. You'd complain about that too no doubt.

Just my 2 cents,

Camain

Fool. Do you not see?

There are also those who have internet and pay for it, but almost NEVER use it.

Yet they are still paying a base rate monthly fee...

So the only way I could even think about "accepting" this program is if it went both ways.

Use it more, pay more.
Use it less, pay less.

But when this comes through, more than likely it will be this.

Use it more, pay more.
Use it none, pay a medium.

I will not support the bottom of the two. Hell, even the top one sucks. It should stay at how it is.

America is America...err, I mean business is business...

OP, I would go with Clearwater just to protest this crap. This is unjust- they're just upset because no one's watching their crappy TV shows anymore.

reply to post by Dramey


You apparently are very familiar with my hometown and people are getting up in arms about this. I have already decided that if they do this I am going to cancel my phone, cable and internet with them, period!

I had to go out of town yesterday so I was getting ready for the trip and hadn't had much time to find out what protests are taking place and am going to write a letter in addition to the call I have already made.

With Frontier and Clearwire as the only competition here I will likely get some package with my Cricket phone (my plan for phone service) and their Clearwire. This is a pain in the butt for me but I refuse to lay down and let them stick it to me again. red

Here is an article from WROC another local television station about the so called concessions TW is making. These don't phase me or fool me at all, they chose our area because of the limited options. Busturds!!!!

Time Warner Cable Makes Changes to Controversial Internet Plan
Reported by: WROC-TV

Friday, Apr 10, 2009 @06:24pm EST


Please Select a Bandwidth High | Med | Low
Time Warner Cable is releasing new details about a controversial plan to begin charging customers based on internet consumption.

Previously, two options for the plan were on the table. Now, it looks like subscribers will have a variety of choices.

TWC says the feedback it has received from customers has been "passionate" and acknowledged that it's communication with customers has been "inadequate." TWC also says that "some recent press reports about our four consumption based billing trials planned for later this year were premature and did not tell the whole story."

TWC says that an "ever-increasing flood of content on the Internet" coupled with it's high-speed Internet users consuming about 40% more content per year. TWC says the network has to be upgraded or there could be "Internet brownouts" by 2012.

The trial plan will be tested in Rochester and Greensboro, North Carolina, beginning in August. In October, trials will begin in Austin and San Antonio, Texas.

From the press release dated April 9th, 2009:

"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.

We are increasing the bandwidth tier sizes included in all existing packages in the trial markets to 10, 20, 40 and 60 GB for Road Runner Lite, Basic, Standard and Turbo packages, respectively. Package prices will remain the same. Overage charges will be $1 per GB per month.

We will introduce a 100 GB Road Runner Turbo package for $75 per month (offering speeds of 10 MB/1 MB). Overage charges will be $1 per GB per month.

Overage charges will be capped at $75 per month. That means that for $150 per month customers could have virtually unlimited usage at Turbo speeds.

Once we implement this trial, we will not immediately start billing customers for overage. Rather, we will first provide two months of usage data. Then we will provide a one-month grace period in which overages will be noted on customers' bills, but they will not be charged. So, customers will have an opportunity to assess their usage and right-size their service packages before usage charges are applied. "

TWC says a similar trial has been started by AT&T and that Comcast, Charter, and Cox are using different methods to manage bandwidth consumption.


It looks like this is an idea that is coming to the forefront with all these greedy pigs, I knew they would find a way to price the average or poor out of the modern world, but I will not go down without a fight.

reply to post by FritosBBQTwist


Please don't call me a fool, I do see. However working 8 years in the cable industry I see how and why they are doing it.

Alot of the Cable ISP's are utilizing a router/server combination called Sandvine. This is to monitor port traffic.

Instead of raising raising rates they could simply start blocking ports. After all your actually paying for 3 ports, 80, 25, and 110. Those are Web, outgoing email, and incoming email. Read your contract, this is what they say you will have access too anyway.

You people keep arguing that Time Warner is doing this, please REMEMBER, Cable providers sign Cable Contract deals with the towns, cities, and munipalities that they operate in. Instead of yelling at Time Warner for trying to do what a business is supposed to do, make money, yell at your elected officials, that contract what the cable company is allowed to do. There the ones that sign the contracts, and to be honest, I think there piss poor at negociating all the way around.

The problem here in the U.S. is that people have gotten spoiled, I remember when dial-up was $30 a month, then they overbuilt the fiber, and all internet bandwidth broke loose. As the number of subscribers went up, the dark fiber was turned on, and utilized. We are now at a point where if they need to expand, they need to build more services. This is going to cost more money.

I can give a 101 reasons why this is good for the average user, yes, if your a gamer, movie watcher, or leech, your costs are going to go up, but thats only if you don't control your habit anyway. Internet use and consumption is just as bad a drinking, and cigerettes, if your sitting around all day with your pud in your hand, you have issues. If your sitting around playing a game all day, you have issues.

Just my 2 cents, but I feel that this is going to be good for our society, and good for the average users. I do see your points though, and respect your opinion. I just don't agree with you.

Cheers though, and have a happy holiday.

Camain

AOL was owned by Warner brothers. I am not sure if it is still owned by them. But unsubscribing AOL was very very difficult. I don't remember exactly, I believe New York sued them and won the case . All these big corporations try to monopolize the business. I know someone who wanted to start a broad band service business for $ 29.95 a month. Come to find out that the market was taken by big Corporations like AT&T and a few others. That fellow tried to seek help from Federal Government who has rented lines to AT&T but all in vain. You have to know people in high levels to get in. I heard that you can get satellite service which is much faster than cable but for upload you have to use your Phone. The last I saw something like that was $ 50/00 a month. I will be interested to see what you find.

[edit on 13-4-2009 by charlie0]

This is not a good idea. They just want more and more money. Do they really think the majority of the people out there will actually pay for this with the economy the way it is? I know I wouldnt! I know many people who wouldnt. I know I would have a huge bill for the amount of downloads and videos I view daily and monthly. I am always online. It's better than a bookstore sometimes when I cant find what I need. It's an unlimited FREE information site and it should stay that way. I am tired of hearing all these companies make up new fees that are very unnecessary and only makes them richer and us poorer.

*by free I mean you pay for the service and can look up as much information for free.

I've been following this story for some time now. Although, I'm pretty much read out and have to admit I haven't read all of this thread. I will add a link to an article which will provide a little food for thought, but mostly add some confirmation to what most of you are already suspecting.

World's Fastest Broadband at $20 per Home

I find it interesting the comment at the end about their fear that many consumers will be dropping their cable in favor of internet video. I already do that to a degree with an HTPC. I don't subscribe to cable. Also, ASUS has in development a TV which runs LINUX and would bring the HTPC concept home to the novice.

There is some talk of Netflix and Google joining together to sue over this action. That would require justification of the price increase in a more substantial form than some lame PR release with a vague mention of infrastructure costs. So there is some hope.

For anyone planning on switching providers... that's hardly an unforeseen move and in markets where AT&T is the alternative, surprise! they too are planning the same move. AT&T's plan was a bit lower than TWC, so that probably had the greatest effect on TWC announcing their revised rates.

The US has been behind the rest of the world in access all the way back to the early 90's when I had to dial long-distance into CRL's servers for the privilege of a shell account to access the internet. This while I was talking with a friend in Germany who had broadband. Take a look at cell phone plans elsewhere also, corporations here rule the roost.

BTW, it's my first post, so hello everybody

Originally posted by mblahnikluver
This is not a good idea. They just want more and more money. Do they really think the majority of the people out there will actually pay for this with the economy the way it is? I know I wouldnt! I know many people who wouldnt.

Yep, and that's what everyone was saying when cigarettes went up to a buck a pack. How much are they now? People depend on the internet. A couple of years ago I went to fix a friend's computer at his office. He used dialup. I ended up staying there until 1am due to trying to download files. It might not look so bad in retrospect, but in actuality, it is interminable.

Some people will have alternatives. I saw someone else here mention getting a T1. If you've never had to pay for one, you might want to look a bit further into that before considering it an option. It's been 5 years, but I paid $3600a month for two T1's (discounted price) and we were a reasonable distance from the local loop. Most desirable places to live are not, since it tends to run through the business sections of towns.