Posted on 01/17/2008 3:58:27 PM PST by ShadowDancer
Time Warner Cable Tests Data-Usage Rate Structure
Thursday, January 17, 2008
NEW YORK — Time Warner Cable will experiment with a new pricing structure for high-speed Internet access later this year, charging customers based on how much data they download, a company spokesman said Wednesday.
The company, the second-largest cable provider in the United States, will start a trial in Beaumont, Texas, in which it will sell new Internet customers tiered levels of service based on how much data they download per month, rather than the usual fixed-price packages with unlimited downloads.
Company spokesman Alex Dudley said the trial was aimed at improving the network performance by making it more costly for heavy users of large downloads.
Dudley said that a small group of super-heavy users of downloads, around 5 percent of the customer base, can account for up to 50 percent of network capacity.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
With FIOS coming to a lot of places around the country? Good luck with that, TW.
What’s FIOS?
It's un-American.
It’s a new product from Verizon. Fiber coming directly to your house.
http://www22.verizon.com/content/ConsumerFios
TW has enough to worry about with this service taking over it’s television business. It would be stupid (but just like them) to try and muscle out their own internet subscribers.
Hey, who pasted that guy’s head onto Teddy Kennedy’s body?
You’re gross.
If I choose to purchase more cars, or more lumber, or more of a zillion other things, the company selling to me rolls out the red carpet, thanks me extra for my business, and goes a little out of their way to make me feel special. They also charge me more in total, of course, than the customer who buys just one car, or just one sheet of plywood or just one of whatever. One hundred cars costs more than one car ... how else could it be. But the per car cost goes down a bit, for bulk purchases.
The high volume customer is valued, more highly.
So here comes Time Warner, trying to make it sound like they are going to penalize the high volume customer with punitive penalty fees, "for the sake of the little guy." The damn liberals must have run the common sense capitalist businessmen out of Time Warner. They got the message all backwards.
Even the electric power company, though liberal around the edges with their green environmentalist propaganda, is at heart capitalist -- the more electricity I use, the more I pay -- fair deal. True, the per-kilowatt cost tends to rise with usage, not shrink, but at least they don't go out of their way to punish you (unlike the Cell Phone company did, when my teen age son discovered text messaging, for example.)
They are pushing expansion of it hard, investing $500 to $1000 per installation, even though they only charge perhaps $60 to $120 per month, depending on what you buy. The service is rock solid, and the data rates excellent.
I have the cheapest internet service available via FIOS, providing a solid 5 mbits down, 2 mbits up, with none of the -dramatic- throttling of upstream bandwidth that I got with Comcast back in Kalifornia if I started sharing files with BitTorrent.
If I wanted, I could get up to 20 or 40 mbits, both up and down, for a very reasonable price.
Verizon likes it because it gives them total lockin on all phone, video and data services. Once they have the upper hand in enough markets with it, I would not be surprised to see my rates to up. But meanwhile, it's a great deal.
Its fiber running to your house. BUT, unless you have fiber running THROUGH your house its the same old bandwidth over plain old copper.
$120 for all three services with that?
The highest available data rate from FIOS is 40 mbits, which is easily handled by either traditional 100 mbit Ethernet twisted pair, or by any of the draft-802.11n wireless routers (I recommend SMC's SMCWEB-N.)
Time Warner? Their cable Tv is OK BUT my AT&T hi speed connection (yes, the same AT&T that wants to “peak” at your “illegal” downloads) is great, so I can bet $$$$ that subscribers will be leaving TW ISP for the competition.
Reminds me of my family members in Canada who are being monitored (and sometimes “capped”) by Bell due to “excessive” donwloads.
>>>>Dudley said that a small group of super-heavy users of downloads, around 5 percent of the customer base, can account for up to 50 percent of network capacity.<<<<<
5% of the subscribers are ACCOUNTABLE FOR 50% OF TRAFFIC?!?
What BS! So TW’s argument is that because of the evil’ 5% that everyone has to pay the price! Anybody smell the liberal stink from this argument?
I download about 200 Gigs a month on my FIOS, and I am not even trying.
I can download an entire 5 gig DVD in less than 40 minutes.
Metered rates. Fat chance. Cry me a river Time Warner.
I priced FIOS with what I have with Comcast now and it was like $90/mo higher than what I'm paying now. I have 3 dual tuner HD DVR's in my house along with phone and internet.
Truly a super-heavy user!
Not true it's a fiber dump staight into your house. They break it out to CAT6. Good for 100 Mbps.
I have the 15 Mbps. down btw. I take every opportunity to tell others about it cause it makes them jealous ;-)
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