Posted on 04/17/2009 12:49:54 PM PDT by Revelation 911
Consumers complained and now Time Warner Cable is canceling its controversial internet pricing plan.
“This had stirred up a hornets nest and I think Time Warner thought it was a lot better to back off then deal with a whole bunch of hornets who are actually their customers.”
Senator Chuck Schumer told Time Warner officials yesterday that he was upset about the tiered pricing plan for internet service. The senator then got a call this morning from Time Warner's CEO to say, “They're withdrawing their plan. They are not going to use Rochester as a guinea pig for any tiered pricing plan, period.”
News 10NBC found that in the last two weeks, 11,000 angry customers came to Phillip Dampier's website, www.StopTheCap.com, to express their outrage over the capped pricing plan...
Dampier said, “This company and other companies are making a lot of money on their broadband service. There is no justification for these usage caps. We kind compare it to a limbo dance a race to the bottom which can get away with the lowest possible broadband cap for the highest possible price.”
Now that the plan is dead, what's the next move? Schumer says he plans to sit down with Time Warner executives to have more discussions on the issue of internet pricing but for now Schumer says, “The citizens of Rochester and the surrounding communities have gotten a victory by their hard work.”
Time Warner did not speak at today's press conference with Senator Schumer. Instead, the company put out this release late this afternoon saying, “We want and have the benefit of our customers’ views as part of our testing process.”
what does a us senator have to do with the relationship between a company and its users?
Why is Schumer injecting himself into a situation involving a publicly traded company?
For those that would complain there is no competition, consider this....
Time Warner contributed $43,500 to Schumer in 2006 ... Read More
http://www.freebase.com/view/en/charles_schumer
http://www.greenamericatoday.org/programs/responsibleshopper/company.cfm?id=345
From 1989 to May 2006, Time Warner gave $15.834 million in campaign contributions. In the 2004 election cycle, Time Warner gave a total of $2.912 million; 76 percent of which went to Democratic candidates. The media giant is particularly concerned with the rules governing television ownership and has interests in relaxing government regulation prohibiting cable television stations from owning broadcast stations in the same market.
-- Center for Responsive Politics, 05/29/2006
I personally contend the stage has now been set for an across the board price hike - it benefits TW & Schumer
It will not matter when the White House takes it over.
Al Gore created the Internet!
Obama made it available to the government ONLY!
1. It was easy to keep track of my usage so I don't get a surprise at the end of the month. My cell phone's internet connection is metered, but there is no way for me to see how much I have used. I don't use it very much because I just don't trust them.
2. There must be a way to limit automatic upgrades in case something screws up. If I download too much I would rather be shut off at a certain point instead of getting a $1000 bill at the end of the month.
Although TW talks about people using their internet to pirate CDs and DVDs, I believe that they are really trying to cut off usage of VOIP phones and legal movie downloads from Netflix. They want the incremental bandwidth cost of downloading a Netflix movie to be about the same as the Time Warner pay per view price, thus you'll be driven back to using Time Warner for movies instead of just as an ISP.
Bandwidth is cheap and will only get cheaper over time. Data compression technology marches on.
Metered internet would only work if there was a very, very low base rate. Around here, the minimum internet package with Time Warner is $55 per month. Maybe a $10 base rate with one gig transfer included per month.
If heavy users have to pay more, light users should pay far less. With metered rates, everyone should have access to the highest speed service as well.
... but the bandwidth caps are really about shutting down competition with online video sources. Why should people buy video through TW’s overpriced cable operations when they can get it free or cheap online?
Suppression of fraud (which is what changing the deal after people have already signed up amounts to) is within the proper purview of government. As for Schumer personally getting involved, that's probably just his cameraphilia acting up again.
That's the other issue. As long as there are monopoly franchises, the cable business doesn't operate by free-market rules. Either competition or regulation is needed -- the former would generally work better, but the latter is better than a government-enforced monopoly that can screw over customers at will without recourse.
In order to garner a coherent response, that question must be framed by one additional parameter. To wit; What year is it?
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