Quote :

" By PETER SVENSSON, AP Technology Writer NEW YORK - You're used to paying extra if you use up your cell phone minutes, but will you be willing to pay extra if your home computer goes over its Internet allowance? Time Warner Cable Inc. customers - and, later, others - may have to, if the company's test of metered Internet access is successful. On Thursday, new Time Warner Cable Internet subscribers in Beaumont, Texas, will have monthly allowances for the amount of data they upload and download. Those who go over will be charged $1 per gigabyte, a Time Warner Cable executive told the Associated Press. 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 percent 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. On 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 much traffic makes up a gigabyte. That uncertainty could scare off new subscribers. Those who mainly do Web surfing or e-mail 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 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 iTunes that use the Internet to deliver video. DVD-by-mail pioneer Netflix Inc. 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., 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. "

http://www.newsobserver.com/business/technology/story/1093679.html

Maybe since it starts thursday its being published again.

[Edited on June 3, 2008 at 10:49 AM. Reason : .]

6/3/2008 10:37:51 AM

link?

also isn't this very [old]?

6/3/2008 10:39:29 AM

hate the idea of it

but it probably won't affect me that much since i don't download THAT much

would be nice if they used at&t's rollover concept though. if they did that i really wouldn't care

^ popped up on digg today, i assume thats why its being posted here.
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080602/tec_time_warner_cable_internet.html?.v=4

6/3/2008 10:42:00 AM

downloading all i can now in preparation



and i doubt this will affect business class customers?

[Edited on June 3, 2008 at 10:56 AM. Reason : ]

6/3/2008 10:55:41 AM

Fortunately, they're just testing it on *new* customers in one Texas town.

hopefully it fails.

6/3/2008 12:54:13 PM

this wouldn't bother me if it were exclusively aimed at cutting down on things like massive illegal bit torrenting, which i'm sure is a majority of the consumption, but it also affects things like online gaming, xbox live streaming movies/tv shows, vonage, etc. i don't want to feel pressured into using the cable companies alternative services (movies on-demand, twc viop, etc.) just to avoid going over the bandwidth limit.

6/3/2008 1:01:18 PM

What would be the major difference in the regular rr to the new 768kbps one? We just browse and use it for xblive.

6/3/2008 2:32:11 PM

The major difference would be your downloads would go about 10% as fast.

In fact, that's the only difference.

6/3/2008 4:42:51 PM

40GB a month? I have used up more than this alone on my gametap subscription in the last month, not counting internet radio use, web browsing, or what have you.

40GB isn't much, they should consider raising that up.

[Edited on June 3, 2008 at 5:13 PM. Reason : They should really just consider not implementing this at all, the assholes.]

6/3/2008 5:12:03 PM

if they are going to do that, then I want my speed to be at least triple what it currently is.

6/3/2008 5:44:17 PM

what good is triple the speed going to do you? that just means you're going to run out of bandwidth three times as fast.

6/3/2008 6:23:45 PM

Well, might as well instant gratification for the first 1/3 of the month than spread over the whole thing, right?

[Edited on June 3, 2008 at 6:37 PM. Reason : Right? ]

6/3/2008 6:37:03 PM

i would go to dsl

6/4/2008 3:26:12 PM

God I hate Time Warner


HOW IN THE FUCK DO THEY NOT HAVE MONEY TO FINANCE NEW INFRASTRUCTURE?!?!



[Edited on June 4, 2008 at 3:45 PM. Reason : ThEY CHARGE PEOPLE FUCKING $45 a month for 3MPS]

[Edited on June 4, 2008 at 3:45 PM. Reason : !@#@&*$^@#&*Q$^@#&Q^]

6/4/2008 3:43:16 PM

oh they do, and they are.

6/4/2008 3:49:00 PM

this is why Net Neutrality is going to be a major issue going forward....

6/4/2008 3:50:10 PM

Quote :

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

Looks like DSL is gonna get a lot more customers.

6/4/2008 4:06:32 PM

Quote :

"because their networks are structured differently"

i'd like to hear more on this subject

6/4/2008 4:09:51 PM

Basically, the big phone companies (ATT, Verizon, Qwest, and Sprint) are also Tier 1 ISPs

TWC is a Tier 2 ISP, and their upstream ISP is Sprint.

6/4/2008 4:26:03 PM

so they have a huge bill every month?

6/4/2008 4:29:02 PM

soo twc pays more if their customers use more

but sprint and other huge ass phone companies dont

right?



[Edited on June 4, 2008 at 4:29 PM. Reason : ^^]

6/4/2008 4:29:14 PM

Quote :

"40GB a month?"

damn that's like a few movies. Could easily do that in like less than half a day.

6/4/2008 4:30:37 PM

Quote :

"HOW IN THE FUCK DO THEY NOT HAVE MONEY TO FINANCE NEW INFRASTRUCTURE?!?!"

because it costs way more than you think.

6/4/2008 4:40:58 PM

If you fuckers stopped your damned illegal P2P sharing, this wouldnt be much of an issue.

6/4/2008 4:45:20 PM

^i don't do p2p.

[Edited on June 4, 2008 at 4:46 PM. Reason : newsgroups w/ssh ftw]

6/4/2008 4:46:05 PM

Quote :

"TWC is a Tier 2 ISP, and their upstream ISP is Sprint."

actually, i'm not sure if this is still true. TW also owns AOL, and AOLTDN is also a Tier 1 ISP, so one would think that TWC would peer with them.

6/4/2008 4:46:56 PM

Isn't TWC splitting from TW media (or whatever)?

6/4/2008 4:52:12 PM

ok here is the catch....

I want speed if they are going to limit me. I don't download too many songs or any movies. I roughly download about 20-30gb....but I want just basic web browsing aka porn browsing to be faster.

6/4/2008 5:03:36 PM

40gb is 4 1080p movies (compressed, obviously)

i don't think that's enough

6/4/2008 5:06:41 PM

i don't mind the 10mbit download speed i get now with time warner, if only the damn upload were faster.

^exactly. well they usually fit them on a dvd9 8.5 gig.

[Edited on June 4, 2008 at 5:08 PM. Reason : .]

6/4/2008 5:07:02 PM

honestly they should just drop bit torrent traffic during high usage times. It would save so much bandwidth.

6/4/2008 5:57:04 PM

but there are legit bit torrent users out there, specially in the corporate scene now.

6/4/2008 6:41:47 PM

I think bit torrent is too offensive a protocol to be used for legitimate business. Its an easy way for companies to pass the distrubution to the customer's isp instead of buying their own bandwidth.

6/4/2008 6:59:10 PM

im working at a fortune 500 company and we're looking at implementing bittorrent. so no, it's on its way up

6/4/2008 7:06:19 PM

thanks for fucking the internet you cheap bastards

6/4/2008 7:07:47 PM

^^^Because it's not like it's the ISP's job to provide bandwidth or anything...

Bittorrent is an excellent distribution method, however it is flawed in some ways. Namely the excess traffic caused by finding connections and maintaining them. If the ISPs wanted to make things run more smoothly, they might could manipulate some things on their end to assist with focusing connections within their own network when available. I'd be interested to know what (if) anything they could actually do. Apart from raising bandwidth caps (which is fine by me, but you know), efficiency counts for something too.

But no, they'd rather just charge us more for shittier service. Sad.

6/4/2008 9:08:03 PM

Quote :

"im working at a fortune 500 company and we're looking at implementing bittorrent. so no, it's on its way up"

hell yes we are

6/4/2008 9:09:04 PM

all the bandwidth in the world wont save you from how shitty bit torrent is. They could increase your pipe to unlimited 10GB up/down and bit torrent would still shit all over your network.

Consumer ISP packages are designed to handle constant low bandwidth applications with room for occasional bursting. They're oversubscribed in many areas, and everyone bit torrenting at once would make it unusable no matter how much bandwidth is available.

Its like if you were in a meeting and people are taking turns talking normally and then all of a sudden someone starts yelling into a microphone. Normal communication cant continue and if someone else starts doing it, it gets even worse.

You can either stop them from doing it at all. Put them in their own room. Or pick a different method for them to communicate (either come up with a more friendly protocol than bit torrent or go back to direct connections).

The best solution would of course be for content providers to pay for the increased bandwidth to use normal direct connections or come up with a better protocol. The next best would be packet shaping. And then finally tiered service.

I've always been of the opinion that content providers should pay for the bandwidth their applications are going to use to deliver that content. If you want to stream HD content into someones home thats great, just pay for your end of the bandwidth. Consumer ISPs are for accessing content, not distrubution.

6/4/2008 9:47:06 PM

Quote :

"Consumer ISPs are for accessing content, not distrubution."

Ok, sure ... but if my ISP gives me bandwidth, I should have every right to use it however I like. Of course, that's what they're getting at, isn't it? They don't want us using it however we like, they know their infrastructure can't handle everyone at once, as you said, since they are oversubscribed.

But metering is clearly the wrong answer. Packet shaping is ideal.

6/4/2008 9:52:19 PM

Oversubscribing keeps costs down, so its not terrible. Long term goverment should encourage competition in local markets instead of granting monopolies as they do now. Short term I agree with you

Quote :

"metering is clearly the wrong answer. Packet shaping is ideal."

6/4/2008 9:55:47 PM

if they start doing this I'm going to start stealing wireless from random people for my torrents

might even try three cards on channels 1, 7, and 13

6/4/2008 10:05:37 PM

Quote :

"BobbyDigital Diaper Technician 27517 Posts user info edit post oh they do, and they are. 6/4/2008 3:49:00 PM"

This is short, eloquent, and to the point.

I also laughed my ass off when I read it.

Great post!

6/6/2008 6:18:07 PM

Hence why TWC is the DEVIL.

DSL rocks, never any downtime, while the cable modem had to be reset maybe weekly, was slow as balls at night time, cost more, and I NEVER got the speed I paid for with cable modem. I now use DSL Lite and very rarely do I need the extra bandwidth.

6/6/2008 11:42:52 PM

Its not about their "Bandwidth" being high.

Its the fact that more and more studios are putting their movies and tv shows available via the web, so as this trend continues to move forward, TWC wants to get a piece of the action.

If you watch tv via nbc.com for 2 hours every night, would that hit the 40Gbps Cap? Im not sure, but I would be that, moving forward, these companies will only make their tv over the web services with larger files and better quality video.

Just my take on things

6/7/2008 7:35:59 AM

I would be very hard pressed to find a way to download more than 1 GB a month. What do you people do?

6/7/2008 9:29:45 AM

^Im pretty sure you can use 1GB in a month just surfing the web and checking your email.

6/7/2008 2:46:26 PM

You'll download more than 1gb a month just browsing through TWW and looking at a few threads with images each day. It's really not that much bandwidth at all.

Also, if people are looking for more reasons to hate on TWC, Los Angeles is filing suit against them for being a huge piece of shit that offers shitty service since they're the only game in town:

http://www.dailytech.com/LA+Steps+up+to+the+Plate+Sues+Time+Warner+Cable+Over+Poor+Service/article12010c.htm

Quote :

"LA Steps up to the Plate, Sues Time Warner Cable Over Poor Service City officials are fed up “Hundreds of thousands of Los Angeles residents were ripped off,” said Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, referring to a complaint against Time Warner Cable regarding the quality of its service that the company provided since its installment as Southern California’s No. 1 cable provider two years ago. “Time Warner must be held accountable for its promises.” According to the soon-to-be-filed complaint, the City of Los Angeles says Time Warner made false and misleading statements to subscribers regarding its quality of service, violating state laws and the terms of the franchise agreement it worked out with the city. Subscribers spend time waiting in agonizingly long hold queues, the city says, and Time Warner’s technicians subjected subscribers to excessive repair work delays. Parts of the agreement mandated that Time Warner customer service representatives answer subscribers’ calls “within 30 seconds,” and repair service interruptions within 24 hours of notification. The city says it will file its suit in a Los Angeles County Superior Court. Time Warner Cable provided no immediate comment. Officials in the city of Costa Mesa, California – less than an hour’s drive south of Los Angeles’ – are mulling similar plans in light of Los Angeles’ announcement. “I requested a copy of the city of Los Angeles’ filing so that I can assess if we need to pursue action of our own,” said Costa Mesa City Attorney Kimberley Hall Barlow. Los Angeles officials say that Time Warner could pay “tens of millions of dollars” in fines if courts rule against it. Time Warner Cable is the exclusive cable provider for a number of Southern California markets, including the aforementioned Costa Mesa. While there exists competition in Los Angeles, Time Warner Cable remains the dominant provider after it acquired the bankrupted Adelphia Communications with fellow provider Comcast in 2006, and arranged for a complex franchise switch that allowed the two to dominate separate markets. The Los Angeles Times notes that the Adelphia transition was difficult due to a need to upgrade and merge with Adelphia’s aging infrastructure, affecting nearly 500,000 subscribers. Los Angeles’ lawsuit specifically focuses on service issues starting during fall 2006 and ending in spring of 2007, citing advertising literature that gave subscribers the impression that pricing would remain the same. One brochure promised customers that Time Warner would fix service interruptions “fast,” when instead technicians would consistently show up for appointments late. In the end, however, the city is angry with Time Warner’s lousy service overall. The company’s cable and internet service “was so intermittent and inferior in quality that it was not much better than no service at all,” says the suit. Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes recently announced plans to jettison Time Warner Cable, spinning it off into an independent company in order to raise Time Warner’s sagging stock price. The company is also experimenting with a metered internet service model, opening test markets with a 40 GB cap in Texas."

That sentence in bold is something I personally agree with. I think in the past few times I've gotten my cable hooked up (or was waiting for somebody else who was getting theirs hooked up) they gave a window of 3-5 hours when they would show up, and they showed up at the very end (or a little later).

They probably need to implement some different rules about "market dominance" and infrastructure ownership. Sort of like saying "you own the lines but you have to be willing to offer those lines at a fair price to the competition".

6/7/2008 4:57:24 PM

Quote :

"They probably need to implement some different rules about "market dominance" and infrastructure ownership. Sort of like saying "you own the lines but you have to be willing to offer those lines at a fair price to the competition"."

i think that has already been done to some extent. but i think it might be complicated by the cable companies having deals with specific cities. i might be entirely wrong about this.

6/16/2008 5:16:45 PM

Quote :

"Its the fact that more and more studios are putting their movies and tv shows available via the web, so as this trend continues to move forward, TWC wants to get a piece of the action."

that is the most insightful comment in the thread imo. MSO's are pissing their pants over hulu right now, and among other purposes, metering will buy them time as far as users canceling their video (cable) service in preference of hulu and bittorrent (and on the non-IP side, satellite). in addition, TWC believes that the amount of users that will cancel their accounts due to metering is negligible to their overall bottom-line. in addition, the bandwidth hogs that leave will help alleviate bandwidth issues for other customers. it's really one of the best business strategies they have at this point. on a side note, MSO's are much more concerned about losing video customers to satellite companies than they are losing data customers to xDSL/FiOS at this point. to us internet dweebs, this might seem counter intuitive.

someone mentioned having faster speeds if metering were in place, and another person mentioned poor uploads. you might not know how much cable is oversubscribed, often to the tune of ~38Mbps/neighborhood for downstream. because of physical limitations, and the way upstream works, you're simply not going to see much more added to your upload speeds until DOCSIS 3.0 starts rolling out (frequency stacking, channel bonding should help out tremendously).

there was a great article on lightreading last week about MSO's not heavily advertising DOCSIS 3.0, which seemed to suggest that they don't want users to know about it because they don't want users to demand it. the overlap of FiOS vs most MSO's is not yet that great, so the majority of cable systems aren't going to do anything until the competition is in their backyard. frankly, they have no reason to invest in many areas where it is simply not necessary.

6/16/2008 7:20:23 PM

Quote :

"Just 5 percent 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. "

how about you fucking charge them crazy instead of the other 95%

and for the record, if you keep increasing the amount of speed we get, then of course we're going to download more. so you can't have it both ways, either you don't want us to use a lot of bandwidth and stop upping the speeds, or you do and fucking deal with it

[Edited on June 16, 2008 at 7:22 PM. Reason : jank]

6/16/2008 7:22:02 PM