Time Warner capping internet access, charging more

I can't find my old thread about this, but, it's starting:

 

How can you track your own bandwidth consumption?

 

This going to curtail some bit torrent fishing

 

Here is another story about it from MSNBC

NEW YORK - You are 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.

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.

Phone companies are less concerned about congestion and are unlikely to impose metered usage on DSL customers, because their networks are structured differently.

Time Warner's tiers will range from $29.95 a month for relatively slow service at 768 kilobits per second and a 5-gigabyte monthly cap to $54.90 per month for fast downloads at 15 megabits per second and a 40-gigabyte cap. Those prices cover the cable portion of subscription bundles that include video or phone services. Both downloads and uploads will count toward the monthly cap.

A possible stumbling block for Time Warner Cable is that customers have had little reason so far to pay attention to how much they download from the Internet, or know much traffic makes up a gigabyte. That uncertainty could scare off new subscribers.

Those who mainly do Web surfing or e-mail have little reason to pay attention to the traffic caps: a gigabyte is about 3,000 Web pages, or 15,000 e-mails without attachments. But those who download movies or TV shows will want to pay attention. A standard-definition movie can take up 1.5 gigabytes, and a high-definition movie can be 6 to 8 gigabytes.

Time Warner Cable subscribers will be able to check out their data consumption on a "gas gauge" on the company's Web page.

The company won't apply the gigabyte surcharges for the first two months. It has 90,000 customers in the trial area, but only new subscribers will be part of the trial.

Billing by the hour was common for dial-up service in the U.S. until AOL introduced an unlimited-usage plan in 1996. Flat-rate, unlimited-usage plans have been credited with encouraging consumer Internet use by making billing easy to understand.

"The metered Internet has been tried and tested and rejected by the consumers overwhelmingly since the days of AOL," information-technology consultant George Ou told the Federal Communications Commission at a hearing on ISP practices in April.



Metered billing could also put a crimp in the plans of services like Apple Inc.'s iTunes that use the Internet to deliver video. DVD-by-mail pioneer Netflix Inc. just launched a TV set-top box that receives an unlimited stream of Internet video for as little as $8.99 per month.

Bend Cable Communications in Bend, Oregon, used to have multitier bandwidth allowances for Internet customers but abandoned them in favor of an across-the-board 100-gigabyte cap. Bend charges $1.50 per extra gigabyte consumed in a month.

 

It says you can track it at their website.


This really is shitty news. 40 GB isn't a ton, I might have to consider switching to DSL if/when I get internet back at home.

 

How will this effect on line gaming (XBox Live PSP?) I-Tunes? Netflix video download?

I can see them raising the price a little but there are too many spoons in the pot so to speak depending on bandwidth and download to have them kill potential customers due to TWC greed.

DSL sucks ass for on line gaming but if I can still download a lot I may swap back

 

This is the key to why this is happening, in addition to piracy of course. Broadband companies aren't going to want to let Apple/Netflix/MS clog up their lines with legal high def video without getting a piece of that revenue. It makes sense from a business standpoint, why would they let these companies take a part of their pipe without getting something? Thus, customers who use those services will have to pay more.

If you are streaming movies from Netflix those 40 GB will get eaten up pretty quickly. By comparison, though, TWC's own On Demand movies which will be competing directly with Netflix/XBL/Apple will not eat into your precious 40 GB. It's a brilliant plan and one that I think is fair, actually. Cable spent the money laying the infrastructure, they should be able to regulate it's use to some extent.

For people like me who d/l tv/movies/games then it kinda sucks.

 

XBL gaming shouldn't take up that much space, I doubt it will be affected even with voice chat. However, every game/Rock Band song you D/L on XBL will count into that 40 GB. Also, every demo and movie you D/L will count towards that as well.

And all the YouTube vids you watch, or other streaming media. All the podcasts you download, all the computer demos, it all starts to add up.

As far as the XB games I used to d/l, they ranged from 4-8 gigs apiece. You can see how quickly that would add up, when you think about how many games I had.

Pirated movies usually come in around 700 MB, or 2/3rds of a gig. Full DVD copies are about 4 gigs. Netflix movies will be a little smaller than 700 MB, but bigger than that once they go to Hi Def (which will be noticably worse than Blu Ray, no matter what they claim.)

So, in essence, if you just surf, you'll likely never even notice the cap. But, if you're like me and do a lot with your connection, prepare to change your habits or your bill will be pretty shocking. I'm sure in a given month I used to d/l over 100 gigs a month.

 

I can deal with caps, but I think they're too low. The high end should be anywhere from 80 to 100 Gig.

I have to use my computer to remote for work, and that eats up some bandwidth itself. I have a feeling Time Warner will have to add to the cap after their initial tests. They'll see a LOT of people bail out and go to DSL.

 

HUGE. Online gaming takes up much more bandwidth than most people realize, plus most 360 demos are 500+ MBs, and as HH's article said, the real problem is those emerging areas. I understand why a cable company would want to crack down on people who use torrents & newsgroups to download massive amounts of movies, TV, and porn, but we're moving to a high bandwidth world for even mainstream purposes.

The real underlying problems are cable mini-monopolies and the haphazard nature of the broadband infrastructure. South Korea has 5 times faster speeds for less than half the cost because their network is more modern and companies have to compete with each other for customers. Here we have a patchwork quilt of connections to go along with local fiefdoms where one company has control of an area. It's absurd. Those old farts in Congress have no idea how significant this problem is or how quickly it's going to spiral out of control. This is going to be a major, major issue in the next decade, and letting these cable barons put artificial limits on consumption solves nothing. Dramatic changes are needed in the cable industry, and massive investment in a nation-wide network is necessary as well.