Posted on 06/02/2008 5:57:03 PM PDT by abt87
NEW YORK (AP) — You're 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.
Time Warner Cable had said in January that it was planning to conduct the trial in Beaumont, but did not give any details. On Monday, Leddy said its 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 Internet portion of subscription bundles that include video or phone services. Both downloads and uploads will count toward the monthly cap.
(Excerpt) Read more at ap.google.com ...
You mean like me, who have satellite internet?
40G sounds like a dream. I pay $55 a month for 7500MB average per rolling 30 days, 512KB down and a 3 second latency, which makes online gaming and some flash sites impossible to access.
Welcome to the Wonderful World of FAP (Fair Access Policy).
I spent 6 years in Telecom up until the bust. IMO it was a pure shell game with the owners spending just enough to keep complaints down to a dull roar. They care nothing for the consumer.
I fully understand your comment about regaining self respect.
Free economy, someone always finds a better business model
You want the government to come in and set the price?
That has been worth every notch in my belt. Well, yeah... cooks that are engineers don't starve.... And get to play free golf.
/johnny
Actually, local and state governments are partially to blame. Most cable companies can get away with jacking up their rates so rapidly because they benefit from exclusive agreements that they sign with town or state officials. Satellite has weather and latency problems, which prevents satellite TV or Internet from becoming serious competition. I believe there are also areas that get cable, but their phone companies don’t offer DSL, let alone fiber.
Solution: governments should revoke the franchise agreements and allow competition between cable companies. Then the market will take care of itself, as consumers will demand lower prices.
Be patient. I'm guessing your phone company will be taking advantage of a business opportunity just given them on a silver platter.
I had 10mbs down and 1mbs up, but I have a server for small business so I needed more upload speed.
FIOS is giving me 15mbs up and down.
I know that Road Runner is fiber optic cable to the "node."
As I understand it each node distributes to from 200 to 300 modems. So all this heavy duty downloading is causing those 200 homes to get less download speed.
What is FIOS?
Verizon offers internet (and tv and phone service) by running fiber optic cables directly to your home. In contrast, cable companies only run fiber to the node, as a previous poster mentioned. FIOS has a lot more bandwidth available than any of the cable companies, and even offer a 20 Mbps upload/download service both ways, although that costs a pretty penny right now.
Unfortunately FIOS is not widely available, due to the fact that setting up the fiber is expensive. AT&T is also rolling out a similar service called U-Verse, although it will be structured under a similar “fiber to the node” system as the cable companies, since AT&T doesn’t want to spend more money building a similar network as Verizon.
/johnny
I'm fortunate in that I have Comcast high speed and Bell South (AT&T) DSL available at my soon-to-be home. I'm going with Comcast initially for TV, Phone, and Cable because the price and performance are a bit better. But I am fortunate to have options.
The next upcoming option, if the price drops, will be internet access through my cell phone carrier, Verizon. They have it in many areas, but it isn't cheap.
One obstacle that exists for AT&T or any other land-line phone company is that in underground installations (in some jurisdictions anyway), the customer owns the wire from the junction box to the house. This is more prevalent in underground installations. Yes, it can be replaced with fiber, but it won't be cheap and could ultimately have a very long payback period. That would make any carrier reluctant to start providing that service. Overhead installations are much cheaper to upgrade since there's no digging and re-sodding involved.
It's Verizon's brand for fiber optic cable to the house.
Wirelessly.
Metered bandwidth is OK, but those caps are way too small. Especially for their outrageous prices.
If they’re going to have a 40Gb cap, drop the price to $20/month and assume people will pay the extra $30/month for extra data transfer.
Personally, I’ll stick with DSL, where I get a consistent 6Mb down at any time, day or night and have no caps.
I trade stocks and currencies online and I’d kill to have Fios where I live.
If I can find a map of where it’s available, I’ll move for it.
Am I right if I say it was $3 per hour above the 5 hour basic?
I didn't last long with AOL, unlimited and cheaper drug me away.
I still have dial-up and it works fine for me. I go to you-tube and listen to the radio online too.I hope this new move by Comcast doesn’t affect me.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.