Time Warner Cable Begins Testing Metered Internet In Texas

R

RichardDeaf

New Member
Joined
Sep 16, 2006
Messages
707
Reaction score
0
Time Warner Cable is going ahead with a test of metered internet, starting Thursday, for new customers in Beaumont, Texas. The metered billing is TWC's proposed answer to the problem of bandwidth hogging super users.

5% of TWC's users take up half of the ISP's capacity, says Kevin Leddy, Time Warner Cable's executive vice president of advanced technology.

"We think it's the fairest way to finance the needed investment in the infrastructure," Leddy said.

Most ISPs already have "download caps" on their so-called unlimited use accounts, but the caps are kept secret.

From Yahoo!:
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.

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.
Click to expand...

We can't help but think this is going to put a damper on services such as the new Netflix box, or Apple's iTunes. It may have some pricey implications for deaf cable customers as well, as they tend to use internet video to communicate.

Then again, it does seem more honest than Comcast's current policy of shutting down users who exceed an undisclosed monthly cap.

What do you think? Will this fly?

Time Warner Cable tries metering Internet use: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance
 
This is going to be bad for Netflix users. :Ohno:
 
Fuck to Time Warner or Comcast, I'm happy with DSL.

Yup, gotta agree with Vampy about bad for Netflix user, also not just only for them, it does affect to online gaming, download too many video or movie on iTunes and use utorrent to download an huge size of files.
 
Pacman said:
Fuck to Time Warner or Comcast, I'm happy with DSL.

Yup, gotta agree with Vampy about bad for Netflix user, also not just only for them, it does affect to online gaming, download too many video or movie on iTunes and use utorrent to download an huge size of files.
Click to expand...
Oh... MySpace could be one of them. I guess these people are gonna have to stop visiting those overdone profiles because it would eat up their bandwidth limit. :(
 
PowerON said:
Why should deaf care? There ain't any CC on Netflix thru online.
Click to expand...

They are referring to VP calls.. It does take up quite a bit of bandwidth if you use it a lot like myself. I spend at least 25+ hours a week on VRS.
 
Pacman said:
Fuck to Time Warner or Comcast, I'm happy with DSL.
Click to expand...

I used to say, "Use my middle finger at Comcast". They charged me $65 for internet only.
Switch to DSL for long time. Now, we have FIOS.
DSL cost me $29.95 and FIOS cost me $35.
 
RichardDeaf said:
They are referring to VP calls.. It does take up quite a bit of bandwidth if you use it a lot like myself. I spend at least 25+ hours a week on VRS.
Click to expand...

VP huh? It's fortunately, I don't use that often. :D

Anyway, it's like it become old-day that we use TTY and call on long-distance to pay minutes to minutes. :)
 
Wokamuka said:
I smell a "Deaf Discount" reason.
Click to expand...

Ha, if they do that, that probably will have a lot restrictions - with deep packet inpections - disallowing normal stuff we do on web.. Hope FCC will react on this issue.

The VP is even insecured like today. Hope VP video will become encrypted one day.
 
Back
Top