Time Warner Cable tries metering Internet use

AP ^ | 6-2-08 | Peter Svensson

[Anti-Bubba182]

NEW YORK (AP) -- 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.

ADVERTISEMENT 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......"

[Anti-Bubba182]

Bad news for big downloaders..

[UCANSEE2]

Meaning, eventually, websites with large traffic will be shut down, not based on actual usage, but upon the whims of companies like TWC who want a way to eliminate all competition, and websites that they don’t agree with politically.

[DieHard the Hunter]

Happens all the time in NZ. I am on a 10gb/mo broadband arrangement: anything over that, and my download speed goes down to 9600bps.

It is bloody barbaric and you should resist the indignity in the US if you can.

Time/Warner is just trying to find another way to make money when they should, in fact, be investing in infrastructure.

NZ Telecom did exactly this over the past decade, and it is now going to bite them in the bum.

[JasonC]

Time Warner is a moribund dinosaur...

[LoneRangerMassachusetts]

Time Warner is a moribund dinosaur...

But will it eat you before it dies?

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

I have no great philosophical problem with this - the more you use the more you pay. They should also factor in time of day - a download at 3AM should be cheaper then one at noon. If customers don’t like it they can take their business elsewhere. The marketplace will eventually sort out how to allocate scarce resources. It’ll still likely be cheaper than driving to the video store.

[PetroniusMaximus]

“Time Warner is a moribund dinosaur...”

Dinosaurs can still crush people.

[Red Dog #1]

I remember way back in the old dial up days that we had hour limits. I think mine was 40 or 50 hours a month.

[dinodino]

Why the hell are the resources scarce, when during the .com boom these dummies laid enough fiber optic to go around the world 500 times?

[Dr. Sivana]

How very 1980’s of them. Guys, Compuserve and Delphi and even GEnie used to get away with that, and people like me used to pay for it (over a 300 baud connection, no less. Most frustrating was the first hour free at CompuServe where 40 minutes was spent setting up the account!

It’s all “Hong Kong Buffet” now.

[Dr. Sivana]

The more I think about this, the more I think that this is NOT about chargin for usage. It is about STEERING usage. Time Warner ... they have movies, they have AOL, they have comic books and THEY HAVE CABLE OUTLETS. Maybe, just maybe this is a shot to get people to use their movie service in stead of downloading Netflix movies.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

Were they laying fiber in your neighborhood? They weren’t in mine. If my neighbor is downloading porn 24/7 and it causes my service to degrade should I care?

[CIB-173RDABN]

This business model has been tried, and failed. The first internet access I had was something called Geni (not sure of spelling). It charged by the minute. After a couple of hefty bills I looked around and found a better access to the internet. Competition will resolve this issue.

[Anti-Bubba182]

I remember Compuserve and Delphi! The bad old days!

[HeartlandOfAmerica]

In the day and age of the satellite, this won't last for long.

But this kind of thing makes me rethink the story I read the other day about the FCC encouraging the putting up of "free" wireless for all.

[Dr. Sivana]

Yeah, I remember GEnie, (their spelling, I think General Electric was involved). Delphi was at one point the main option to get real Internet outside of schools and military. GEnie was a pretty sad service, they had decent news feeds for the time, that’s about it.

[JasonC]

Nope. Don't have anything to do with it...

[JasonC]

The layers of overlying rock, and the stony immobility, kinda prevent that. I mean, a museum display might fall over or something, but otherwise, no danger whatever.

[Reaganwuzthebest]

Well looks like I’ll be looking for someone else if they go with this. I heard the maximum usage before being charged extra could be as little as 5 gigabytes per month, which is a joke. Even 40 gigabytes isn’t very much considering all the streaming video and audio most people like to listen to. For Comcast I think their limit is 250 gigabytes per month and that’s more reasonable.

[Reaganwuzthebest]

This business model has been tried, and failed.

It probably will again and I'm sure Time Warner is aware of this. It'll be their loss when customers start voting with their pocketbooks.

[Bobalu]

I live way out in the sticks and there are now 3 broadband providers here...so competition is improving. I think Time Warner will wind up backing away from this plan.

[snarks_when_bored]

Those who go over will be charged $1 per gigabyte, a Time Warner Cable executive told the Associated Press.

Hey, didn't the founders of the internet assure us that "information wants to be free"?

[Ciexyz]

damn.

[montag813]

Can’t they just throttle down 14-year olds who download Iron Man telescreen videos, and leave the rest of us alone? Idiot teenagers likely account for at least 30% of all traffic over their lines.

[ASOC]

The issue of the commons.

GCI (An Alaskan ISP) has been doing this for years.

The competition OTOH doesn’t bother.

Guess who is loosing market share? (Hint - GCI, stock price went from $14+/share to under $7/share in less than a year...)

[LonghornFreeper]

If customers don’t like it they can take their business elsewhere. The marketplace will eventually sort out how to allocate scarce resources.

That is the problem. There is no marketplace for this type of cable services, nor could there be. Cable internet comes to your home via cable that must be laid in the ground. This involves ripping up the ground in peoples' front yards (or sometimes the back yard, as in my case). Technically this land is a utility easement, so the government can do it, but I am expected to maintain it, mow it, etc. It is this way in most suburban areas, at least those I've seen.

The question is, are we going to allow multiple other companies to come along and dig in our yards and put in new cable lines any time some start-up company wants to try to compete with Time Warner? Obviously not. Normally I oppose government regulation, but the fact that Time Warner requires government intervention, in order to force me to allow them to dig in my yard, means they subject themselves to government regulation to counter their monopoly power.

Saying the market will sort it out is like saying the market will sort out city water or sewage prices. What are you going to do to compete, buy bottles of water to shower with?

[Cacique]

btt

[PetroniusMaximus]

Apparently you missed Jurassic Park!

:)

[mysterio]

It probably will again and I'm sure Time Warner is aware of this. It'll be their loss when customers start voting with their pocketbooks.

Don't worry, as soon as TW does this, Comcast and ATT will follow suit. Don't think that they will downgrade their service like this unless they are sure the other majors will, too.

[brityank]

DieHard -- Do they give you any type of tool to monitor your usage on an ongoing basis, or do you just hit the brick wall? I have DSL, and they keep pushing FiOS -- but it costs more, and I don't see any real need for my use to get any faster than I have with no limits.

Does any ISP provide throughput tools?

[Reaganwuzthebest]

Comcast is talking about doing it also but they’re looking at a maximum of 250gbs per month before overcharges kick in. What TW is proposing is unreasonable, they deserve to lose customers if they follow through with such low caps.

[mysterio]

If comcast is going to downgrade their service, they should drop their high price.

[DieHard the Hunter]

They are actually pretty good about that. I get an e-mail warning at 80%, and again at 100%. And I can check my account on their website anytime.

They are not proactive, tho’ — you have to watch, and then to ask for changes, if your usage plan needs to be adjusted.

[Reaganwuzthebest]

They should but probably won’t. If I’m reading this story right TW plans to raise their price on the premium service in addition to imposing caps with penalties.

[brityank]

Well, getting an email for 80% with two weeks to go isn’t my idea of monitoring. :^)

Though it sounds as if you can upgrade on the fly, but likely at a step-value that’s higher than you’d want for an ongoing bill. I went from 56K @ $25/Mo to DSL 2 $40, but no limits — so far. The DSL is at 1.5GB Down, 0.5GB Up, and the tests I’ve run across the web show I an in that ballpark. The only slowdown is with the servers in the route; I have NeoTrace Pro to Ping/trace/ID the hops.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

Decent argument if it weren’t for DSL now, and in time other technologies such as wimax, wifi etc.

[DieHard the Hunter]

Yup. And what we consider to be “Broadband” would be entirely unacceptable to civilized folk.

Theresa Gattung (former CEO of Telecom NZ) is at fault for this: she felt it was OK to cheat us and keep us confused on pricing matters, so long as it enhanced shareholder value.

There is alot to be said for nationalizing core infrastructure, such as telecommunications, and rail, and electricity. The New Zealand experience demonstrates this adequately. If there is to be a monopoly, let it be a monopoly that can be influenced by voters, rather than controlled by anonymous overseas shareholders.

This no doubt flies in the face of some closely-held beliefs of some FReepers. Too Dam’n Bad: they need to experience what a real Monopoly is like — they will change their tune quick-smart.

[CarrotAndStick]

If my neighbor is downloading porn 24/7 and it causes my service to degrade should I care?

Unless both you and your neighbour are using the same internet connection, with the same remote server-end IP address, your usage should not affect his or her usage, and vice-versa. The servers allocate bandwidth to each customer, and one party's share should not creep into the other's. If it's doing that, your ISP is making the both of you pay twice the amount together, for what is essentially a single connection.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

Cable is a shared media - what you say is demonstrably false with respect to cable. What you say *only* applies to DSL.

[CarrotAndStick]

DU Meter is a nice little utility to monitor both incoming and outgoing traffic, and also to give you feedback on whether it's worth waiting for webpages that take a while to load, simply by showing you a tiny bar graph on incoming data.

The blue portion is the incoming data that will form the webpage. If you click on a webpage or start a download, and it shows nothing on the graph, it just means that the site won't load, no matter how long you wait for the "Cannot display webpage / Cannot download file from server" message to flash. The tiny specks of red and yellow on the graph are outgoing, and mixed traffic, respectively.

The transparency can be adjusted to make it anything from completely opaque to totally invisible (make it visible again by clicking on the taskbar icon).

The utility also logs incoming and outgoing traffic for as long as it is used, and can alert you when you are approaching the download limit set by your ISP. You can manually set the warning, too. It's a tiny piece of software, and doesn't hog system resources.

[CarrotAndStick]

I used to have cable, and even there, I recall the ISP providing me one static IP that was unique to my connection. In fact, the thing even had MAC ID requirements that prevented others from accessing my share. I'm not sure what the deal is in your local area, but if what you say is how it is, I'd strongly suggest that you change to DSL or some other non-shared medium. The ISP is ripping you off, in your case. What sort of plan are you on, and what's the monthly charge?

PS: Using a wireless router that is unsecured can allow others to access your bandwidth.

[ShadowAce]

[wtc911]

PS: Using a wireless router that is unsecured can allow others to access your bandwidth.

------------------------------------

I own a few investment properties that are co-op apartments. I just put a new tenant in one. I called him a week after he moved in just to make sure everything was ok. He was delighted when he found out that there are at least three other tenants in the building using un-encrypted wireless that he can access for his own use.

He saw it as a plus, I realized that my new tenant lacks character.

[CarrotAndStick]

Depending on local laws, the ones whose bandwidth your new tenant is stealing, can sue him enough to land him in serious trouble for doing so.

In fact, if your new tenant does something illegal through the stolen bandwidth, it can get the other tenant who has paid for the bandwidth, and has the connection in his or her name, into trouble as well.

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=9029

[Nick Danger]

eventually, websites with large traffic will be shut down, not based on actual usage, but upon the whims of companies like TWC

Hi there! Billy Mays for Buy-a-Clue! Do you think sites like Google are run from some guy's AOL account? You need a clue! And if you order now, I'll double the offer! Plus, you also get a brain! That's two clues, and a brain, for only $19.95!

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

Thanks for making my point. I’m in the networking industry so I do know something about what I’m saying.

1. Cable is a shared media.
2. Having a static IP does not change #1 - static IP is at Layer 3 of the networking stack while shared media is layers #1 and #2.
3. None of this depends on one’s “local area”. It’s a function of the cable media.
4. The DSL/Cable competition is what keeps internet access from being a monopoly hence competition does apply and the market can, in principle, sort it out.
5. The ISP is not “ripping me off”. I’m paying for access to a shared media. I knew this when I signed up. I’ve been paying a decent price for decent service.
6. If you’re happy with DSL by all means enjoy.
7. Yes we all know that unsecured wireless routers allow piggy-backing - another shared physical media BTW.

[antiRepublicrat]

Meaning, eventually, websites with large traffic will be shut down, not based on actual usage, but upon the whims of companies like TWC who want a way to eliminate all competition, and websites that they don’t agree with politically.

This is the common-sense, honest way to avoid all of that.

[CarrotAndStick]

So, you don’t find it unfair that your neighbour’s usage statistics could affect your internet experience, despite both of you paying for the connections, individually?

If yes, then all I can say is: To each one, his/her own.

[UCANSEE2]

If having a brain means I would end up making personal attacks on other posters, such as you are doing, I’ll go without.

What I was trying to get across (and I apologize for not making it clearer for the mentally challenged) was that websites like FREE REPUBLIC could be shutdown by ‘fining’ the heck of them for exceeding their ‘limit’ (which will end up being set ‘low’ for unknown reasons).

If you think that won’t, or couldn’t happen, you underestimate the greed and avarice of politicians who would stand on your dead body just to make themselves appear taller behind the podium.

[wtc911]

You are correct. And, even if he gets away with it he is till a thief.