Time Warner Scraps Bandwidth Cap Testing

[Ohio Joe]

Source: PCMAG.COM

Time Warner Cable has shelved plans to test consumption-based billing until it can improve its "customer education process," the company announced Thursday.

"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," Time Warner CEO Glen Britt said in a statement. "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."

Time Warner started testing bandwidth caps last year in its Beaumont, Texas market – a test that it recently expanded to North Carolina and New York.

But while rival Comcast implemented a 250GB bandwidth cap for residential customers last year without much fanfare, and AT&T announced plans to test a 150GB cap, Time Warner took some heat because its caps were relatively low – between 5GB and 40GB.


Read more: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2345430,00.asp

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Misunderstanding? ummm no, we understand exactly how you are trying to screw us.

[Eurobabe]

1. Good, evil bastards.

[Born Free]

13. Monopoly tax

More and more people are learning they can get more entertainment for less than $10.00 a month from Netflix then they get for twice that much paying for a cable premium channel, and many savy cable customers are dropping those more expensive premium channels for Netflix and revenue was dropping from losing that business. TWC thought they could make up some of the loses by adding a usage tax that also would help deter their customers from taking advantage of the savings through Netflix as they would be afraid they would go over the caps. This is exactly the type of monopoly behavior that forced the government to create laws to protect consumers. They will keep trying, it's not over yet, keep your eyes and ears open, expect a lot of talk about piracy and network abusers and all the other phony excuses they can hide behind.

[Renew Deal]

2. Great news!

:bounce:

[Kolesar]

3. I would like a pricing plan where I paid less -- I largely read news and message boards

[KamaAina]

29. That is the correct way to implement tiered pricing

Offer a low-priced "basic" tier that could compete on price with dial-up.

In the words of the immortal John Belushi, however, "But nooooooooooooooooo!, No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!"

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

4. If you can't deliver actual X Mbps, don't sell X Mbps. Sell X/2 or X/10 or whatever.

Caps are EVIL.

Do you pay more for cable if you leave the TV on 24/7?

Bandwidth caps were invented by Satan.

[Javaman]

12. "Bandwidth caps were invented by Satan."

:rofl:

That would make a fantastic tag line!!!

[liberal N proud]

5. Good, it is something they would have lost on

I know that I would have dropped them as quickly as I could find a new provider. Both Cable and Internet.

[HillbillyBob]

6. We were time warner customers until we got fed up

with the band caps, that were about half of what we were paying for, the constant dropouts, slowdowns and being told that we used too much bandwidth when we were PAYING for a business account.The customer service was no great shakes either.
We don't have that problem now. We fired them and got Wild Blue satellite, we now get the bandwidth we pay for, it is always on when it does drop due to heavy weather we should not be on anyway. It does have draw backs and drop outs, though not nearly as often or as total as TW.
edited to add
We also went to DishTv too, we get more for the price, it is more expensive, but we get a lot more. We get Link tv, Free Speech tv, and access to overseas channels that give a whole new look in on the spin that one gets from the US corpsemedia.

[barbtries]

7. eh, fuck 'em

i think i'm ready to go to clear wire anyway. "customer education process" = "we haven't yet hit on the right mix of propaganda to make our greedy plans fly"

[jeff30997]

15. "customer education process"

Yeah,I find this pretty condescending and creepy too.

[UnrepentantUnitarian]

21. Yeah, sounds like they're the ones who need it.

Instead of an education process, maybe an attitude adjustment process.

[Spazito]

25. Yep, it stood out to me as well...

"until it can improve its "customer education process". They are working on their "you are getting very sleepy, caps are good, repeat, caps are good" techniques.

Very brazen of them to state it so baldly, imo.

[xxqqqzme]

24. I read "customer education process" as

next years advertising is saturation level.

[ananda]

8. T-W still sucks!

They need to be regulated bigtime, just
for their regular service prices.. which
are outrageous.

[mainegreen]

9. Translated: Oh fuck, whoops, did we say $5/GB? We mean another number.

We'll get back to you when we figure out what the highest number we can change without imploding our business model and getting the Internet (anon) AND legislators riled up. It was all a big misunderstanding you see....

[Javaman]

10. so in other words...

they have to come up with a new phrase to cover their basic screwing over of the masses for profit.

I'm waiting for something along the lines of "value plus" or "tiered program" or "special offer" or another euphemism to describe their robbery.

[Liberalynn]

11. Chuck Schumer told them they shouldn't be using Rochester, NY

as a test market to begin with since there really is very few alternatives here. Where I am unless you want Frontier DSL, Time Warner is it for high speed, and Frontier comes with its own host of problems. Verizon or ATT aren't available here, and most smaller companies only supply businesses.

As for Frontier you have to sign up for a two year contract which they charge you a huge a penalty for ending early.

And I don't want satelite TV either. My cousins goes out everytime there is a lot of wind, and lately that's all the time around here.

The local news did, however, say that Time Warner may still send you a usage guage, and customers would get charged the cost of the box. Asses.

[JJ]

14. 95% of the US has very little or no alternative.

[Liberalynn]

17. This no compettition stuff stinks wherever it is.

[antimatter98]

16. TWC is an evil corporation and would charge $1000 to just read the weather if they could do it. n/t

[BadgerKid]

19. They tried it, sort of.

But the National Weather Service is still here -- and it is upgrading its features. :D

[Triana]

18. "improve customer education process" = better catapult the propaganda. n/t

[sarcasmo]

20. A Greedy corporation decide it wanted to stop more Greed? Color me shocked.

[Irreverend IX]

22. As long as this economy continues...

You can bet that no one will do anything to bar the flow of electronic entertainment to the masses. If the digital bread and circuses disappeared, cities would be burning in short order.

[Vidar]

23. Assholes just cancelled by three favorite cable radio channels without warning as well.

[aquart]

26. "Customer education"? Couldn't teach them to screw themselves?

[kaygore]

27. We need free high band wireless much as the interstate highway system was free

Let's get companies out of the Internet business. After all, the government is already monitoring all our digital communications, they might as well provide us with free high-speed wireless for the right to spy on us.

[Psephos]

31. It wasn't free

It just doesn't cost a toll to drive on it.

Just sayin'... :)

[kaygore]

32. Good point--but look at how it stiimulated the economy!!!

[Psephos]

33. An equally good point :)

[BlancheSplanchnik]

28. Time Warner is famous for "Low Rate deals"...woo hooo, great, till you read the fine print...

After one year: Rate Hikes!!

They have always sucked.
We have no cable here, and when I couldn't live with dial up anymore, I searched around and got a Verizon air Card. I'm not a big tv watcher, so I'm fine with no cable (dish tv is Frontier and I don't like them either.) We're fine with rabbit ears and taking out movies at the library. :thumbsup:

Works great!

[Occulus]

30. Here's another reason to be glad for this

As I type, I'm downloading my shiny new purchase of "The Last Remnant", a new jRPG from Square for the PC. I played the demo and liked what I saw, so I said "What the hell?" and went ahead and bought it on Steam, the online distribution platform created by Valve for their own games.

But here's the thing: this game weighs in at over twelve gigabytes. Not only that, but this is not the only game I ave available to me on Steam. I also have everything Half-Life 2, Portal, Team Fortress 2, Audiosurf, and quite a few others purchased and available to download from Steam should I ever want to play them.

So, let's suppose I want to repopulate my Steam list, and install a few games that I've purchased. I could very very easily run over the limit in as few as two days, depending on how many games I decided to install.

Keep in mind- these are games I have already bought.

So with TW's new scheme, I would pay and pay and pay just to obtain games I've already purchased. Were this idea to catch on, the entire model of online game distribution would grind to a screeching halt and I would be stuck cluttering up my place again with discs I need to keep and keep clean and unscratched, as well as silly slips of paper with activation codes on them. Online distribution is easier and much much more transparent to the user, but if what TW wants to do catches on, it will end.

Gamers like me just dodged a very serious bullet, and we desperately need legislation to end this idea on the federal level.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, it's not just gamers. I also use Google Earth and Microsoft Worldwide Telescope, and both of those come with the possibility of having to download very large files incidental to the course of their normal operation. Those applications would die out as well.

I'm glad we won on this one, but the fight isn't over. We need to make it impossible to set up systems like this, or several things we already use and enjoy will become things of the past for all but those who can pay the extra cost.