In a bold move that will probably cost them a large portion of their informed customer base, Time Warner cable is going to add a bandwidth cap to their internet services. Essentially, once you exceed your bandwidth for the month, the meter starts running. And since the allocated amounts for each user’s bandwidth each month are, lets face it, kinda low, this looks to be a huge cash cow for TW until people start realizing what’s going on. So what can you do with 40GB?
The latest story is: TW will have 4 levels, ranging from 5 GB to 40 GB a month. This really isn’t that much anymore, since more and more people are streaming movies and high-def content through their internet connections. What’s even more frightening is that while they are the first to say that they’ll charge for overages, TW isn’t the only one looking at this. AT&T is conducting their own trials, and of course Comcast has that 250GB per month cap. The difference is of course, if you go over with Comcast, they give you a phone call. Time Warner just starts the clock. Also that Comcast’s cap is eight times the size of TW’s.
So how many people just ran to the phone to change to a new provider? If you didn’t… consider it.
[Via Reddit]
You failed to report TWCs’ true colors: they are only doing this in markets that have no real competition (that’s pretty common outside of tech enclaves, btw).
The most effective weapon against this is not merely dropping their service, but for enraged citizens to camp out on their local politicians’ backsides and force them to withdraw the cable franchise (read: monopoly) from TWC and give it to someone else at a lower price as punishment. That way TWC won’t loose a small percentage of their customers in a captive market, but ALL of them.
Do you have a source on this? I will almost certainly drop TW if this is true, but I have yet to see it on my bill, and all you link to are people talking about how horrible it is, not any sort of confirmation TW is actually doing it.
I talked with some co-workers and friends about this the other day, after the first bill, depending on how bad it is, I’ll be dropping them for sure.
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc20090331_726397.htm
This would appear to be the article you should have linked to.
Anyway, I have a feeling their “trial” will play out very differently in Austin TX than it did in Beaumont. I would be very surprised if they moved forward with this nationally, after losing all their Austin customers.
This is taking place right now in my town of Greensboro, NC.
It was first reported in our local newspaper:
http://www.news-record.com/content/2009/04/02/article/time_warner_cable_will_track_charge_by_internet_usage
I have confirmed this directly with Time Warner myself by contacting the internet cable support staff.
My co-worker canceled his service immediately and when he called their general hot line they didn’t even know about it. It wasn’t until he talked to the girls supervisor who then called his supervisor and repeatedly apologized as he had know knowledge of this until that point.
FYI:
CEO of TWC – Glenn Britt (glenn.britt@twcable.com), 203-328-0670 ====== TWC Executive Customer Service – (TWC.COTP@twcable.com), 203-328-0600 (option 2) Leader of Office of the President team: James Abott ====== Time Warner General Counsel Marc Lawrence Apfelbaum (marc.lawrence-apfelbaum@twcable.com) 203-328-0631
Pretty scary dude but you summed it up in two words “Cash Cow”. Everybody is hurting so what is the quickest way for a telecom to earn fast easy money, just charge more for what customers use most. Once again the sheeple get the short end of the stick.
RT
http://www.anon-tools.cz.tc
End stage fascism, greed unleased. Not content with the number of zeros padding out thier balance sheets, the oligarchy monopolists, like crack addicts are quite prepared to strangle thier victums if it means a short term increase in profits.
Is English a second language??? If you are going to make an attempt to sound overly educated, at least run what you are saying through a spell checker. With that, I re-wrote your rant as I find it to be quite true.
“End stage fascism! Greed unleashed!”
The herald proclaimed from atop his podium. “They are not content with the number of zeros padding their balance sheets.” “Nay! I declare these obligarchy monopolists, like crack addicts, quite prepared to strangle their victims if it means a short term increase in profits.”
The herald glared at the crowd. His thoughts slowly overtaking him. The rage swelling as he recalled opening his bill and seeing the $3000 dollar internet bill.
“DAMN YOU PR0N!!!” “DAMN YOU TO HELL!!!”
obligarchy? before you post a scathing comment, making fun of someone for not spell checking, perhaps you should spell check your own.
That made me laugh. It would have been epic if he had put “obligarchy” in bold.
Tip: the red squiggly line means it’s misspelled.
Moreover, oligarchy monopoly is an oxymoron. Choose.
Muphry’s law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaudere%27s_Law
“obligarchy” – wasn’t it a pun on obligatory/oligarchy to show that the monopolists were the few that have a strangehold on what are considered by some to be necessary (”obligatory”) services?
you can’t spell either. How to look like a complete fool, by Haxcid.
Let’s face it, the ISPs doing this are ones that have services that compete with what people download (movies).
The real problem is the CONFLICT OF INTEREST that TW has. THIS is where government regulation should step in and say “because you have a monopoly and are in a conflicted position, you cannot do this.”
If you live in central Austin, keep in mind you can always switch to Grande. As a Time Warner customer, I’m switching. And Grande imposes no caps. Hoorah!
um- no, I live in Austin and unfortunately we DON”T have choice– If you live in certain areas you can get Grande, if you live in others you can ONLY get Time Warner (if you want to go with a cable provider instead of AT&T)
Yeah if you live north of 51st street or west of I-35 you’re not going to get grande, and AT&T Uverse is only available in the nice westaustin areas. ohwell I guess there is always satellite cable that will go out when it rains
This is correct. When TW had that bs fight with KXAN a few months ago, I checked into the other ISPs and dish networks to dump TWC.
I’m just off of Braker… and cannot get Uverse nor AA&T NOR Grande. I am screwed!!! And very pissed.
If your in Greensboro (as I am). You have the following options that I have found so far…
1. Clearwire…no caps but throttling, no VOIP allowed however…not it all areas
2. ATT DSL…no caps…pretty limited in the area however, if you can get it, your pretty lucky.
3. Earthlink Cable…they use TW cable lines…not sure how this will affect them in the future…no many people are aware of this option…
So far, thats about it. U-verse is still a ways away…
Earthlink is probably the best alternative for Triad area people. They lease their lines from TWC, but have a completely different billing structure and support group.
They need a tag letting everyone know how awsome they are. Like…IT’S COMCRAPSTIC.
You guys should see how shitty things are in Australia. Caps are everywhere, and if you’re lucky you’ll have one as big as 25gb.
Yeah, caps suck. My provider put an upload cap of 30GB/day on my 100Mbps FTTH line, and it’s really limiting.
Tokyo connectivity is awful!
I’m a TimeWarner customer and will be switching immediately and urge everyone else to do it now instead of after it starts in order to put pressure on them early. Grande here we come.
DUMB, DUMB, DUMB. FAIL! EPIC FAIL. LOSE, WRONG, BROKEN, as Time Warner says, “You’ll never work in this town again kid-”
YOU LOSE!!!!!
Good thing there is no Time Warner in the NW United States.
Bunch of bullshit is what this is.
All I have in my town is Time Faggot.
Why insult gays? We’re against caps, too!
A 40GB cap would truly suck.
Imagine downloading a few Linux DVD distro’s to test out, maybe say 4*4GB, so 16GB just for the download, 32GB to seed them to 1:1 and not be a prick, 40GB is terrible.
Already sent them an e-mail telling them my $170/month account will be canceled if they push through with this BS. Regardless if it’s in LA (where I am) or Manhattan, this is EXTREME BS.
40gb what a joke
You could reach that in a week or two easily even without being a pirate.
It’s completely ridiculous, but there’s barely anything we can do about it. I will be switching to the inferior Frontier DSL assuming they don’t institute a cap in the same time period. In addition, I wrote multiple e-mail addresses at Time Warner and have filed a complaint with the NYS Attorney General’s office.
I seriously doubt they are going to do a 40gb cap. The info quoted was for Beaumont and they are lookin into a more tech oriented town like Austin. I have a feeling we will be looking at something more like 250gb same as comcast.
40 or 250, that’s not the point. They don’t allot me a limited time to watch television, why would they put a limit on my Internet use? I seriously doubt that Time Warner Cable’s TV customers would accept new terms that charged them for every minute over some set limit that they watched TV in a month.
Why should we expect our Internet service to be any different? We’ve been using Roadrunner in our city for years with no limitations. Now, if I want to continue using the same amount of bandwidth, I’m likely going to have to pay exorbitant amounts of money. I easily use 100 GB per month between all of the computers in my home, personal time and work.
Their current 40GB plans are about $55 monthly, already $15 more than I pay. If I use 150GB a month (easy for me) that’s a cool $165 for my damn ISP bill. And what’s the alternative? Higher capped tiers? If they even do this, it’s at LEAST going to be in the $80 range for a 100GB cap, which again, I will exceed quickly, landing me in Time Warner’s feeding tank with pockets full of money.
Screw their ridiculous proposal and screw their greed. I will switch to the inferior service, while waiting and hoping that Verizon brings us unfettered access to its FiOS service in the near future. What else can I do?
Here in Belgium there is a cap. The two largest internet providers provide a 25 GB priced at 42 Euros (which is a lot!) a month and one of their slogans is :” [telenet] opens your world”…more like closes it. It really sucks at takes all the fun away. Oh dammnit i can’t download a perfectly legal ps3 demo at 2gb..oh yes i’m a pirate.
I hate belgium.
“So how many people just ran to the phone to change to a new provider? If you didn’t… consider it.”
I didn’t, because my city is MONOPOLIZED.
I’m also in Greensboro and will be canceling my TW Cable subscription
I was so happy when we moved at the end of last year, and no longer had to deal with Time Warner Cable. I’ve been considering a move back to Austin, but if it means having to deal with those jackasses…I may wait until FIOS is available down there.
I’m not sure what to make of this… On one hand we have had unlimited bandwidth every month for years and years. But on the other hand, it almost seems logical. when you use more minutes on your cell phone you pay more. If you turn every light, TV, PC, etc. on in your house you pay a higher electirc bill. What makes Internet bandwidth the exception? As more and more web content becomes so bandwidth rich it puts that much more of a strain on their pipes. Maybe paying a little more will equal larger faster pipes in the future. I don’t know… just a thought…
WiseGuy, the American people have already PAID for higher speed internet than we’ve gotten! We were supposed to have 45 Mbps Down AND Up stream speeds. We were supposed to have these speeds by the year 2000 or something like it.
Just google 200 Billion broadband scandal. You’ll find out how much these companies have already ripped us off for.
I signed up for a two year price lock on all my services from TW about 6 months ago.
There’s no way they re going to impose caps here in San Antonio.
Beaumont, maybe. But heck, I don’t think there are more than 20 or 30 internet capable computers in all of Jefferson County.
I’ll assume that was a joke.I live in Jeff county and my house ALONE has 6 pc’s hooked to the net.And seeing as Beaumont is just as big as San Antone,I think bandwidth caps are JUST as likely to happen in your city as in Beaumont.
And from what I read elsewhere online, Time Warner Pirates (oops I mean CABLE) has already gotten so much bad publicity and heat from both consumers as well as elected officials, that they have CANCELED the BMT cap experiment.
I have Earthlink but I believe that it is actually Time Warner’s cable plant that it goes through. If my service gets these kinds of ridiculous restrictions ill be more than happy to move to DSL. It may be slower but not having a cap would out-weigh that downside.
From a business persepctive this is suicide. Unless all other carriers adapt a simliar policy, customers will simply choose a provider that offers unlimited bandwidth for a flat rate. Even if all providers adapt this bandwidth-cap philosophy, it will create a huge market opportunity for a new company to emerge with unlimited bandwidth. This is so dumb, and I doubt any company would consider adapting this policy, given that they hope to remain profitable.
Time effing Warner wants you to get your movies from them, not the internet. The big question is, how will this affect the average user that has phone service—which is also using bandwidth? If you have TWC and they want to impose this, be award that if you use their phone service as well, then you could be subject to these bandwidth charges. A chat with one of their level one reps revealed nothing other than, “we’ll keep people informed.” Well, when they inform me, I’ll jump.
PX4, I guarantee you there are more internet geeks in Jefferson County than you think. I’m glad I switched to ATT when I moved to Austin. It took me three months just to get Time Warner to cut off my service. They kept billing me.
Caps. Bah. My wife is working on a Master’s degree in Studio Art online. She does about 40Gb a week. She has to upload max resolution images of her work daily! Then download all the other students work and comment on it.
That doesn’t even consider my Amazon MP3 and video downloads.
My mom, still living in Jefferson County, quit TIme Warner. It was more for the way they screwed up the channels. There’s no local NBC or Fox (I forget which) because TW doesn’t get enough income from the station there.
I live in the Beaumont area and have been hit with a 75$ overage bill. Only went over once but looks like this month will be over aagin. I am dropping for att dsl. I filed a complaint with the bbb and ftc as this usage limit was never mentioned at sign up. They still don’t tell you about the limit when signing up for a new account. Most people just pay the bill and have no idea what the “one time and installation fee” is for. Hope they loose the franchise here.
I live in England, but if I did live in America, I would change abd switch to the smallest ISP I could find
I had cable and internet service through Time Warner and was advised that I should add the digital phone service to “bundle”. I took time off work for them to come out to install the digital phone service. They arrived promptly and spent less than 5 minutes. Upon leaving they advised I was “All set up” I asked about my security system due to the phone connection.
The service guy said “Your all set”. After they left I immediately went on the internet — IT DIDN’T WORK. I took over an hour for the “HELP” desk to get the internet back up and running. I then tested the alarm system (6 pm)… IT DIDN’T WORK. I called the “HELP” desk. I requested they send a tech back out to handle. I was advised they would be here before 8 pm. It is now 8:30 – NO TECH.
I just called the “HELP” desk and asked of status. They “don’t know when the tech will be here” … it may not be tonight. I asked to speak with a supervisor. I was advised by the HELP desk that the supervisor JONATHAN said he WOULD NOT TAKE THE CALL! UNBELIEVABLE. THIS IS PATHETIC SERVICE.