Goodbye Cable Internet

  Quote

Despite the recent backlash against Time Warner Cable for their attempt to impose low caps and high overages, smaller cable operators and the organization that represents them insist that metered billing is coming -- whether you like it or not. Broadcasting and Cable says that several attendees of American Cable Association's (ACA) annual summit, including Sunflower Broadband and Wave Broadband, either already bill by the byte or plan to start doing so shortly. ACA President Matt Polka puts forth the by-now-familiar argument that metered billing is necessary for the good of the network, and that when it comes to a shift to metered billing "the outcome is certain." As Time Warner Cable learned, consumers and competitors -- assuming these companies have any -- might have something to say about that.

Fantastic, seems every fucking cable provider is going to jump on this per gigabyte fee. $15 a month for 1 gig, wtf is that shit? $35 for 5 gigs? are you fucking kidding me? $1.27 per gig over? And to add insult to injury, Time Warner just reported revenue gains of 11% for the first quarter...yea, their current business model sure doesn't seem to be working.

I just can't fathom how retarded this shit is.

what are you serious?

when does this go into effect?

Its been in the works for a year and they seem to be finishing up their test markets (markets which conviently don't have FiOS). My guess is summer.

well, it's been like that since the begining here in portugal, but now they're starting to be free...

maybe this is the kind of dumb-fuckery that will put municipal wifi over the top.

I could swear I just read that they're ditching the cap idea.

edit: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/04/time-warner-c-1

I don't see how this works.

Sure some people use a fuckload of bandwidth, but MOST still pay the same cost and use prob 2% of that. So it should balance out, no?

Plus with new competition of FiOs, how is this going to work?

  tv_party said:

I could swear I just read that they're ditching the cap idea.

 

edit: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/04/time-warner-c-1

Yea me too, but the above quote is from today at DSL reports: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/America...evitable-102166

edit: yea this quote from article sums it up:

"In a statement, TWC made clear isn’t giving up on the idea — it just lost a public relations battle, saying that it was "shelving the trials while the customer education process continues.""

greedy fuckers. unfortunately cable is the best game in most towns. despite anemic competition in most places it would still require serious collusion to be effective.

  Quote

"In a statement, TWC made clear isn’t giving up on the idea — it just lost a public relations battle, saying that it was "shelving the trials while the customer education process continues."

god I hate suits.

Yes it's possible and yes it's legal, just come to Portugal

surely on america there will be at least one provider who doesn't do this shit. just change provider if that's the case.

not in the age of deregulation. hopefully obama won't be like clinton in supporting this bullshit.

  GORDO said:

surely on america there will be at least one provider who doesn't do this shit. just change provider if that's the case.

I think for this to work all providers will have to switch to that type of policy.

exactly, it will be all or none. once one company sees how much money can be made with caps they'll all be on it.

but once one company realizes he can steal all the consumers by not pulling this shit off...

no way, maybe lower prices, but not free, hahahahHAHAHAHAH LOL

You'd think they'd be dumb to go through with this, but I think they have plan behind it all.

Think of it this way. They can't compete with Hulu/Netflix and are losing TV sales. They also want to move into that same market - on demand entertainment - but in order to do that nation wide they need a serious overhaul to their networks. Two birds with one stone, cap bandwidth and reduce network traffic to places like Hulu while at the same time rolling out 'meter free' on demand tv.

As much as I hate Comcast, I'll stick with it as long as it has a monthly rate. In Ohio, there's another provider called WOW that's pretty decent. They'll probably stick with the same old strategy.

so does this involve only cable companies then? im sure there are other types of internet providers

  Drahken said:

You'd think they'd be dumb to go through with this, but I think they have plan behind it all.

 

Think of it this way. They can't compete with Hulu/Netflix and are losing TV sales. They also want to move into that same market - on demand entertainment - but in order to do that nation wide they need a serious overhaul to their networks. Two birds with one stone, cap bandwidth and reduce network traffic to places like Hulu while at the same time rolling out 'meter free' on demand tv.

yep rock and hard place. I don't see it working in the long run. it's another failure of a distribution model ala the record industry vs. p2p.

Looks like I'll just use my Simply Everything plan from Sprint on my Palm Pre (when it comes out) to Watmm.

The local telephone company in an 11,000 person Minnesota town objected when the town decided to lay its own fiber optic network. It filed a lawsuit, then suddenly rolled out its own fiber network.

Read.

wtf they sued the entire town?

I don't think people realize how much of a monopoly cable and telecom and cellular industries have here in America. There is no way around it anymore, even in a small town of 11k.

Well, you should read the entire article. I'd have posted a synopsis but am incredibly lazy.