Time Warner focusing on education and tools to measure bandwidth
posted by pylornsBasically because of the public outcry they’re “re-evaluating the testing” in favor of providing bandwidth tools so you too can measure the amount of bandwidth. They are still “testing” just not charging anyone for it, they want you to know how much bandwidth you use so they can charge you for it and that way by the time we get to the point you’ll be used to seeing your bandwidth amount. It’s not that they are going to stop the program, they still plan on capping bandwidth. They just want to shift focus because of the bad PR.
(New York, NY) — Time Warner Cable (NYSE:TWC) today announced it would alter plans to test Consumption Based Billing, shelving the trials while the customer education process continues.
Time Warner Cable Chief Executive Officer Glenn Britt said, “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. As a result, we will not proceed with implementation of additional tests until further consultation with our customers and other interested parties, ensuring that community needs are being met. While we continue to believe that consumption based billing may be the best pricing plan for consumers, we want to do everything we can to inform our customers of our plans and have the benefit of their views as part of our testing process.”
Time Warner Cable also announced that it is working to make measurement tools available as quickly as possible. These tools will help customers understand how much bandwidth they consume and aid in the dialog going forward.
Britt added, “We look forward to continuing to work with Senator Schumer, our customers and all of the other interested parties as the process moves forward, to ensure that informed decisions are made about the best way to continue to provide our customers with the level of service that they expect and deserve from Time Warner Cable.”
I have measurement tools already, its called a router with DD-WRT.
Whose bright idea was this? Time Warner has spent years pushing their current speed packages – faster internet etc. explaining that faster internet meant we could stream better larger movies and other cool things that take up LOTS of bandwidth. So someone there came up with the bright idea “You know how we’ve got them all hooked on the higher bandwidth, which we advertised about and told them it was unlimited, lets start charging when they go over 40GB of bandwidth.”
Tags: bandwidth, cable, Cap, Time Warner, TWC
Posted in Technical, news | 1 Comment »
April 16th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
There was a good article about this today on MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30229181/
they point out how other providers are testing doing the same thing but their base cap is 4 times higher then time warners for less!
Time Warner, the nation’s third-largest Internet service provider, in its five experimental markets is offering 5 gigabytes of downloaded Internet content for $29.95 per month.
The largest ISP, AT&T, says it started similar trials Nov. 1 in Beaumont, Texas, and in Reno, offering between 20GB ($19.95) and 150GB ($65) per month depending on connection speed, with excess usage charged at $1 per gigabyte.
I also wouldn’t be surprised if they then offer an “unlimited” package for $100, which points this all back to, marketing to get more money.
Back in the day with the internet was new, phone companies tried to do a similar thing. they were mad because customers were now tieing up phone lines for hours on end using them for internet. the ISP’s got money but they didn’t get a dime and were upset that their hardware was being used and they were having to beef up their phone network to handle the traffic and they weren’t making more money, so they cried, and got smacked down by the FCC when they said, hell no, you will not charge customers for using your phone lines for internet. you gave them a phone line and told them they could use it when ever, it’s not their fault you didn’t plan for more people using it for a longer period of time.
sounds like the same argument from time warner, people are downloading movies and stuff on their network and now they are going to have to beef it up to meet demand and they think they should get more money because users are using it in the way it was sold to them, live, always on conneciton you can use 24×7….. course they didn’t actually plan for as many people using it in the way it was intended.