Posted on 04/06/2009 6:40:15 PM PDT by Reaganwuzthebest
Sue Polinsky had the first cable modem in Greensboro.
Back in the late 1990s, when the Web designer found she needed more Internet speed than a telephone or DSL line could provide, she was happy to pay a premium. She’s been a Time Warner Cable customer ever since — even upgrading to the business-class service to run her company, Tech Triad, from home.
But when she got wind of Time Warner’s plan to begin monitoring and capping how much data its Greensboro customers use, she said it could be summed up in one word.
“Greed,” Polinsky said. “That’s all it is.”
Time Warner has chosen the Triad area as one of four test markets for its new tiered pricing system. In the fall, new customers and those at the end of their contracts will get new plans that treat their Internet use much like cell-phone use. The company will begin charging users for all the data transmitted over their cable lines — everything from Web pages to photos, songs and videos.
The plans range from $29.95 to $54.90 a month and will limit usage to five, 10, 20 or 40 gigabytes of data per month. Going over those caps will cost $1 for each gigabyte.
“Even the highest cap of 40 gigs is just ridiculous,” Polinsky said. “They’re designed so that customers will go over.”
(Excerpt) Read more at news-record.com ...
If TW goes with this nationally or in my area I’m gone. After eight years as a loyal customer I will not be told that my internet use is going be rationed in the future.
>After eight years as a loyal customer I will not be told that my internet use is going be rationed in the future.
Hmmm, maybe Ford and GM should adopt a similar charge-by-the-mile plan, that sounds great, right?
Wow...
Cap-and-Trade for the Internet...
Whooda thunk?
>Cap-and-Trade for the Internet...
>
>Whooda thunk?
Obama.
Get a load of this lame reply from a one Landel Hobbs:
When you go to lunch with a friend, do you split the bill in half if he gets the steak and you have a salad?
With ridiculous comments like that I'd say Landel is most likely looking for a job at General Motors. It sounds like he'd fit right in.
Time Warner has, in essence, a monopoly. You could go with satellite internet, which is an alternative until it rains or snows, and you lose signal. Not to mention the initial cost of the modem. Or drop back to dial-up, which is only good for email anymore. :-(
Well, “net neutrality” has something to do with it, too, in terms of the “plan” by some of these big companies supplying the ISP services, squeezing out the “Internet 1” — in place of “Internet 2”
Death of the Internet
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/june2008/120608_a_death.htm
And you can see some more information on “net neutrality”, on this thread where it was “beat to death”... LOL...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2222481/posts?page=19#19
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Here are some links to Net Neutrality, which has been argued about long before Obama. I’ve thought that the absence of “net neutrality” is what would *control* the Internet, rather than the current maintaining of it.
From Tim Berners-Lee (invented the World-wide Web in 1989)
http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/node/144
Daniel J. Weitzner, Principal Research Scientist
MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
The Neutral Internet: An Information Architecture for Open Societies
http://dig.csail.mit.edu/2006/06/neutralnet.html
General Wikipedia article on it...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality
A Net Neutrality FAQ
http://www.timwu.org/network_neutrality.html
A Google company statement on it...
http://www.google.com/help/netneutrality.html
Brief Wall Street Journal article on it...
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20090402-713158.html
An older CNN article — Keep the Internet neutral, fair and free
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/06/09/newmark.internet/
That’s sort of a starter on it... LOL...
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Without “net neutrality” you’re going to see more of this, and the squeezing out of the “first Internet” (that first link in this post) in place of the new “Internet 2” (which has been a work in progress for over a decade or more).
And also, without “net neutrality”, you’ll probably see site like this (i.e., Free Republic) squeezed out, too, eventually (not something happening very quickly, because of this, but eventually...).
We’ve got Verizon in the area and FiOs is on the way so that means for us the switch shouldn’t be too much of a problem. I do feel for those in Rochester and other cities where’s little competition.
My guess is that she’s moving back to DSL.
THE sole purpose behind this, IMHO, is to limit file sharing.The only way around it is to purchase a large segment of their pipe, heavily load it with advertising, and open it up for ‘free”
I guess I’ll have to research DSL.
I’m looking into ATT UVerse. A friend dumped Time Warner and went w/ ATT (2 mos.)and likes it.
Their phone, TV, internet pkg. is about the same price for pretty much identical items.
If you can scale down the internet from 6mbps to 3 or 1.5 the price drops accordingly.
Anyone have ATT UVerse?
Oh, hurry, Mr. O! The government will save us!
What terrifies the telcos and cable companies are things like Hulu and Skype that threaten their lock on entertainment and communications.
The idea of caps is to force you back to TV "packages" available only from your friendly cable company and phone services only from your friendly local telco, both of whom have local government granted monopolies.
File sharing is a fleabite by comparison.
I’ve had satelite internet for years, no other alternative where I live but it’s gotten progressively suckier. Hughes net has a cap of 425 MB of download a day, after that you have to wait for 24 hrs for the thing to reset. Also, they have severely oversold their broadband capacity so in the mornings the speed is O.K. but after 1:00 or 2:00 P.M. it slows dramatically until late evening. But that’s the trade-off for living in a less populated area. :)
I'm on comcast cable modem. DSL was not really an option for me as I was at the outer limits (too far from the CO) to make it viable.
This is to mainly stop people from watching video on the web. Even phone usage is relatively low bandwidth. If you download a full DVD from Netflix, Time Warner will charge you an extra $4 if you are over the limit. I bet that is pretty close to their pay-per-view price on the cable.
Now consider a family with teenagers and it's easy to see how ludicrous Landel Hobbs's comment was that those consuming over 40gbs monthly are "heavy" internet users. Within a year or two 100gbs will be considered light, that is if TW isn't allowed their rationing plan complete with gas gouges to go forward.
The whole thing is a greed scheme and I believe you to be absolutely correct, it's really about stopping Netflix and other upcoming video streaming competitors while forcing everyone back to traditional tv cable lines.
“Greed,” Polinsky said. “That’s all it is.”
Gotta be a liberal. If they don’t give her what she wants for the price she wants, they must be greedy. It’s real simple. If you don’t want to pay what they are asking, then switch to a different provider. I dropped Time Warner like a hot potato when I found their service didn’t match their promises.
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