If they were smart they would do what cell phone companies do. Have different levels of information per price plans. So many gigs for so much, twice the gigs for almost twice as much, up to about 4 levels, then have Unlimited for more than all of them.

I'm not saying this is a good idea, in Raleigh if you don't have road runner, then you have dsl which is horrendous, all I'm saying is this is how they woul dmake the most money by screwing the hell out of the consumer. Fios has yet to catch up so they can still get away with things like this.

theespacepope

Finally! I've been waiting for the day we revert to the old pay-per-minute policies of AOL 3.0. We're getting closer!!

Hiphopopotamus

thank god i just switched to fios in houston. beaumont isn't far from here.

dhaberer

@sebas0069: I feel obligated to correct anyone that says this and inform them that Bush is really from Connecticut.

And this plan sucks balls.

I want Grande cable so bad, everyone I know that has used it likes it. Plus their customer service is actually nice and their repair guys are prompt. My friend called them one morning when the modem went dead and they had someone out there that afternoon.

absentblue

@NightElfMohawk:

tv-wise their cable prices are still reasonable though. i was paying $150 a month on direct tv (all channels only 2 boxes) before switching over... now i pay $150 a month with 3 hdtv dvr (2 of them dualtuner)AND my internet. i was gonna try dishnetwork see if i could go cheaper but they limit only ONE hd dvr per home. and i was still only gonna save about $20 but WITHOUT internet.... but i still say we need competition here.

izim1

I pay almost $50 a month for 60 GB in Canada. You guys are such babies.

kaos.rox

Allright Time Warner, I've been putting up with the financial assault you've been pounding upon me since getting *gasp* 2 cable boxes, one of which is DVR, no premium channels, and cablemodem access, because it was still tolerable here in Austin. If you end up doing this though, I'm going back down to just cable (or seeing if I can finally get Grande cable in my area), and I will, despite how much I hate them, switch to AT&T DSL. You're pushing me, baby...

NightElfMohawk

@Mike from Boston:
Yes that's pretty much every business boardroom in history.

FullFlava

@adam12hicks:
The problem is, there likely won't be any "mass exodus" of customers. The vast majority of people (the 95% who don't eat up huge amounts of bandwidth) don't know enough about this stuff to care. I've got a bad feeling that by the time real bandwidth-eating stuff (i.e. streaming HD) becomes truly mainstream, this kind of system will have already moved into place and it'll be too late. And don't think they haven't thought to cover their own download services, I'm sure there will be some sort of plan for allowing you to hand over your money for "premium" content without racking up your bandwidth count.

Even though the bandwidth hogs will be an extremely vocal minority, they're still vastly outnumbered by people who have more important things to worry about. Not discounting the importance of this, but for most people out there this is very, very low on their list of priorities.

It really wouldn't be difficult for them to spin this as a good thing for the majority, something like "now we charge based on usage so it's a better value for the average home user" or "bandwidth caps allow us to provide higher speed and better service to everyone." The only real problem here is the lack of competition and choice.

FullFlava

with all the new iptv and movie rental stuff hitting the net this won't fly for long I forsee a huge backlash from customers/gamers.

demonwolf

@decerbo:
time warner cable is/was comcast. comcast is/was att cable. they keep selling/changing name/companies whatever, but they remain the only cable company in north texas. the ONLY sbc dsl available is the 1.5mps "express package" and verizon fios is only available to about 10-15% of the area. if you want cable or broadband cable internet an you live in north texas. you have NO options....

izim1

If they try this in my area, I'm dumping them immediately.

Is this how they hope to compete with FIOS? Start imposing caps? Whomever is making decisions at Time Warner is a moron!

pastrychef

I used to live in Sydney, AU where ADSL (1.5 mbit, mind you) was pretty much the best service you could get. On top of that, they had a tiered payment system. I think I was paying AU$70/mo for 16 GB of downloads. Here's Exetel's current price list, for the interested: [www.exetel.com.au] They also now offer ADSL2 with faster speeds. Safe is to say, I am MUCH happier to be back in the US with no cap to speak of (except for the Comcast "Fuck you, customers" cap).

The thing that worries me about this is that Comcast is claiming that they need to stop BitTorrent uploading as a mode of network management. That's another way of saying "we need to keep people from using the service they pay for because we can't actually offer that to every single person all the time." Yet at the same time, Comcast is trumpeting faster speeds to the home ([arstechnica.com]). HOW DOES THAT MAKE SENSE? How is that even legal?

I'm just a tech who wants decent internet service at home. Yet, when a company says with one mouth that their network can't handle the demand and with another that they're increasing speeds, my mind fails to continue processing anything, ever. Why isn't the FCC/Congress nailing their ass to a wall?

It's like the people in charge don't actually know how the internet works.

jrronimo

Warner died when they merged with AOL, the service slowly dropped to AOL levels then when they couldn't get my connection working for months they decided that me connecting to my company VPN once a quarter when I was on call meant I had to buy their business class service so I dropped them.

enine

I can just see a bunch of suits sitting around asking, "Hmmm...what else can we charge for?"

Mike from Boston

@MrSpyder:
What about Comcast?

decerbo

This is the Hidden Cost of the "Digital Delivery Future" that everybody likes to ramble about.

Everybody says that BluRay and/or HD-DVD are the last physical media...and that downloading movies is the way of the future.

Well, guess what: if you make a few iTunes rentals (or purchases) a month, you might just have to spring for a larger cap on you internet service. Suddenly, you're paying an extra $20/month so you can download 5 movies from iTunes. That "wonderful" $3/movie rental charge just increased to $7. If you buy movies for $10-$20 and download online, add another few dollars to the price there too.

Suddenly, driving to the store or ordering off Amazon (with free shipping) appears a whole lot cheaper...

EQC

Texas is a great state. We have the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. And lots of other hot women. And we all have guns!

Anyways, this isn't that big of a deal. It's not state or government mandated, so the mass exodus of customers will result in the dissolution of this plan. We have too many other options for broadband to care about these guys.

adam12hicks

I'm a Time Warner customer in California, and if they try to put me on this, I'm going to finally call Verizon about Fios. Just saying.

HeartBurnKid

do you know if they will offer this as a less expensive plan, as well as the current unlimited?

MrBlahBlah

It would be nice if it was capitalism and we had a choice. That's not the case. In many places where I live(Texas), you either get Time Warner or you get nothing. And don't say dish, that's ridiculous. DSL isn't in all areas and they're the only cable provider. There needs to be more choice in cable and service providers, bottom line.

MrSpyder

@Coder4Life: Except watching a lot of TV (Besides On-Demand) doesn't change how much bandwidth is being used.

FuzzysFriedChicken

It's a set back. I remember a friend of mine in australia told me about this kinda stuff and I was like, dood how could you even survive with only 5gb a month, that's a serious issue there.

I wasn't even expected this primitive system would finally come to the state (or maybe there are some similar services already here?)

Belief

or wait.. That's like a school teacher being like "Sorry Tommy you get a timeout because you read too many books this week"...

Coder4Life

That's like putting a limit on how many hours of tv you can watch a month...

Coder4Life

That's Bush fault. He leaves in Texas.

sebas0069

But here's the kicker. Time Warner wants to charge you a bunch of money for downloading a bunch of content. At the same time, Time Warner via Warner Bros is hoping that you'll pay to download their large media files (movies) and do so often.

So... If you give too much money to Warner by legally watching a bunch of their properties, you'll hit your bandwidth cap and have to pay them even more in overage fees.

Yay.

SinistarX

i can't understand why you have so few reasons for not moving to texas

josecardozo

The 90's called, they want their broadband pricing back.

M_Mickey

I'm so glad that my apartment complex here at UT Austin switched to Grande internet. Its soo much cheaper and soo much faster! Go Grande! Fuck the Bird!

daftrok

Ridiculous... They act as if there not making unreasonable amounts of profit per quarter. If you want to limit peoples usage, slow a user who is eating more than a normal amount thats one thing, but when u throttle one service, or start charging by the byte, you ruin the entire concept of net neutrality. Its the internet, its supposed to be free.

Darrone

Time Warner boycott hoooo.

tehmark

Thats a lot of bit torrent.

thechansen

It's better to just bandwidth throttle people down to reasonable levels, and expand that as the network grows.

But it's their business so they can run things however they like I guess.

We'll see if their new model survives under capitalism.

dcartist

Yeah it'll be more like $50 for 2GB. This pisses me off so much.

DestroyerMTL

They'll be lucky if it's $50 for 500gigs...

dataguy

@Darrone: Yeah, sure. Like how cell phones, television, and mail is free. Its a form of communication that costs someone something to produce. It's not free.

I dont see this as a big deal if it is that kind of bandwidth. As cable gets faster and *certain* people are going to start downloading massive amounts of content they should get charged more. Im a casual user who pays $50 anyway, this wouldnt affect me.

It would affect those who are really using the system, like how everything else is. Overuse your cell phone, overage charges. Drive a lot, high gas bill. Kill to many hookers, high lawyer fees.

The only thing I want to see is that they force the providers to sell bandwidth to other providers at wholesale so you can get rid of local monopolies.

archercc

Don't charge people that download money. Charge the content providers. It's already commonplace with hosting companies, but the problem arises when p2p gets involved and people uploaded disgusting amounts of data on p2p networks.

drummerjoe

Now just think how unpopular the Sandvine packet shaping tech is going to be perceived when you pay per Gb!

axiomatic

With the amount of bandwidth that streamed HD content will use, I forsee many providers moving to this kind of system, I will be shocked to see something like 500 GB for $50... as streaming becomes more widespread, I expect the number to be low enough for casual use while resulting in extra costs for anyone that streams more than one or two HD movies per week

freelunch

Some of the previous posters have it exactly right: if this country actually supported and legislated for free enterprise, if it honestly felt competition was a good thing and made sure it wasn't actively legislated against ... the free market would take care of this latest assault on customer rights and customer service. Too f*ucking bad it doesn't. Too fu*cking bad the US isn't anywhere near as advanced as Korea or a slew of other nations when it comes to internet services.

lianna_g

Jeez, when I think of testing a product of service in a select area, what comes to mind are beneficial things: Starbucks and iTunes release market-by-market, Verizon Wireless' Ringback Tones, the rollout of EV-DO.

Those poor suckers in Beaumont are really getting the shaft.

badfad

I don't get it. Whenever I bittorrent it is almost painkstakingly slow. It might be downloading for a LONG time, but it definetly is not taking up a lot of my available bandwidth.

MrMaestr0

If the real intention is just to deflect the higher network maintenance costs away from the low-end users, then I can understand why they are trying to push this. By keeping broadband costs lower for the "average" consumer (whom they purport to be the other 95% whom contribute to only 50% of bandwidth), they can try to attract more low end users.

However, I don't believe that they'd try to pass on those savings to the low end customers who are already paying what TW knows to be their price point. And they could sell extra network throughput as a selling feature to remaining customers, or whatever other profitable ventures they may decide to do with it.

Obviously most us 5% who use the internet for all its great multimedia features (illegal torrents ;) would never go for that, so TW will end up losing 5% of their revenues and the rest of the customers would end up paying, on average, the same (plus a little more to make up for the lost 5%).

They are offering slightly less to slightly fewer for the same price or more. It seems clear that this is only a cash grab at the expense of higher-usage consumers, whom they are trying to villify, and is a sure way to shrink your customer base rather than grow your business. And like others said, if it is on a per byte basis, then it will become easier for them to neglect updating their usage rates as the average user's bandwidth also goes up.

Fierock

@MrSpyder: HAHA speed channel. i went through that too. i needed my motogp and formula one races so i paid the extra $5 though. but now its back on the basic package and they might as well call it the NASCRAP channel...... i liked it alot better when it was speedvision. you can blame all that on FOX though.

izim1

@Mike from Boston & Fullflava: Actually the suits sit around in boardrooms asking themselves, "How can we take something a customer is already buying, cut it up into multiple services while creating a incomprehensible billing scheme so the customer is fooled into paying more for the same thing?"

Rand

What is all the fuss about, I've been paying $10 per GB a year ago. Not in the USA though... Now I'm paying $50 for IPTV and 2 mbit flat rate Internet, it's a bit change in a year.

rospaya

I have been Road Runner customer since they brought the service to Austin (10+ years). The minute they try to hit me with this type of pricing is the minute I switch providers. I don't download movies or use bit torrent but I also don't want to have to worry about my usage each month.

Its ironic that when cable companies moved into long distance, they adopted a flat rate model rather than a per-minute model yet now we have a cable company planning move from a flat rate model in broadband to a by-the-byte model.

GusRandall

I also live in texas (houston suburban) and we were part of the Time Warner area that sold/traded to comcast. We immediately noticed throttling when we used netmeeting or aimpro stuff after the switchover. It royally sucks and fios/verizon or (att formerly sbc) won't come to our address. The only other option (besides comcast's $40 a month) is $65 a month fee for slower speeds from a small telecom that is the only choice for local phones/DSL. I like having multiple HD-DVRs for the house with cable, but I am dying for better internet options. Help! Free the internet!

scarab

@HeartBurnKid: Just because the two Canadian ISPs have a monopoly over the industry, doesn't mean we mind taking it up the ass. We have no choice. Either pay them for a 60GB cap (that has been in place since I can remember, it's 100GB for 18mbps connections) and get your content, or disconect from the Internet and move to the States. Personally, I'd rather pay.

xtremesniper

I seriously think the gov. needs to step in.

thebattousai185

First the mobile phone network providers sneakily do this with data by either disabling your account or citing "reasonable usage." Now wired broadband providers?

Did the first exchanges use a pay per time model for private lines?

khefer

@izim1: I can't go with any dish because I tend to live in apartments, and most of them don't allow you to mount them on the building. But there's 2 cable companies here, just that one is not available in all areas (Grande), and Time Warner's available basically anywhere.

@absentblue: Thank you for correcting that - as someone born and mainly raised in Texas but not a bible-thumping moron, I'm appreciative to see I'm not the only one that has to point out the doofus is not from this state as well, he just got to the White House from here.

NightElfMohawk

@izim1: Thanks for getting my back.
I meant FIOS isn't in all areas(and DSL sucks). Cable in North Texas is a bad joke. and Time Warner is the worst. Back when I lived in Austin and had TW I got the tier over basic cable specifically to get Speed Channel. Two races into the Formula 1 season, Speed channel disappears. I called and they said(i'm paraphrasing) 'it's on a special sports package for extra bucks and it's always been that way so tough cookies.' After that I lived without cable for almost a year. I hate Time Warner.

MrSpyder

Plus, Grande has NFL Network bundled... I'm jealous of my friends that have it.

NightElfMohawk

@kaos.rox: Hey, just because Canadian ISPs suck, doesn't make us babies; it just means you don't mind taking it up the ass.

HeartBurnKid

@rainfever:

Agreed.

dead_red_eyes

I would rather see ISP's throttle back bandwidth than limit the amount of data you can download in one billing cycle. In essence it achieves similar results but doesn't create a situation where a customer could go over their limit and get hammered by the cost. Having said that, I'm not in favor of download limits or reduced bandwidth. ISP's need to keep bolstering their network instead of getting stagnant and penalizing customers for it.

St3v3

@MrBlahBlah: "do you know if they will offer this as a less expensive plan, as well as the current unlimited?"

It's $50 for 500 gigs. If your definition of $50 is the "least", well then either inflation has gone really bad or you're some rich mother f.. heh. j/k.

ripfire4

I'm shocked at the lack of "oh noes, what about my pr0n?!" comments...

If meant in good faith, what TW is doing makes sense. I have never measured my bandwidth consumption and I certainly like unmetered service (well, as unmetered as a low-end DSL line from ATT can provide), but I bet capped service can be offered at a lower cost than one-size-fits-all unlimited. From the article:

...tiered levels of service based on how much data they download per month...

I'm imagining a low-end tier for Grandma & Grandma, a mid-range tier to satisfy regular users and light gamers, and high-end tiers for the heavy users and gamers.

drizzten

fuck that fucking shit

rainfever

@Fierock:

Actually, if they manage to get rid of unprofitable users (e.g. bandwidth hogs using torrents) TW will increase profits. They will then be able to lower rates to compete with other providers (e.g. Sprint's Xohm or 700Mhz).

Variable pricing is good for the average consumer. It's only painful for people trying to game the system (which would be the average Gizmodo reader, apparently).

Sihanouk-s-Poodle

@Bender:

Then there wouldn't be a reason to even test this new billing scheme.

I'm glad this topic came up because it leads to something I've been meaning to figure out for a couple of weeks but have been too lazy to do it. I'm hoping to start up a small hosting company for a few of my buddies websites. If this actually ends up taking off, what will that mean for me? In other words, how are hosting companies charged for their Internet usage?

tdj114

@Bender: Yup, thats what TW is all about, making things cheaper for the average user....
Let me take a stab at what they'll do... Have a minimum charge of about 29.99 to 39.99, then charge you .01 per meg over that usage per month. Meaning you pay the same, we pay more, and TW gets to blow its load on a bigger stack of money.

Darrone

They should start charging $1 per MB for all data streaming internationally. That would put a kink in out-sourcing. Tech support would return to this country and real estate prices in Bangalore would plummet.

whootowl

As long as this is not an excuse to make ridiculous amount more money from broadband customers (and I recognize that is the subtext of what many of you are saying), I am not certain I have a problem with it. If I am using more of the bandwidth, that means I probably should be paying more.

Monty

I mostly use the Internet for web browsing and email, so I think TW would classify me as a low bandwidth customer. I'd have no problem with high bandwidth users subsidizing my internet access since thats what I'm doing for them now. If this results in $10-15/month broadband for the low usage customers, sign me up.

And for those talking about a mass exodus from TW, what makes you think that isn't exactly what TW wants? Drive out all the costly high bandwidth users and be left with the profitable low bandwidth users. Makes perfect sense to me.

Bender

It's time to find another ISP. Who's with me?

notamacnyc

This is another reason why I'm bitter. The technology sector sucks alot. It took HOW long PC makers to start phasing out 3 1/4 diskettes, serial ports and the such? These horrendously slow technology take-ups are such a downer for the rest of us. So many greedy people are standing in the way of actually enjoying technology.

I don't think Time-Warner and Comcast wouldn't be punishing customer's for actually using their "unlimited" internet service if they had already gone ahead and started doing the properly thing and gone with Fiber Optics, which handle much higher bandwidths and are scalable for future use. The state of the current consumer internet services is almost DEMANDING for this change to happen.

futaihikage

Here's the thing. If there's a hard cap, then the will definitely not be allowed to throttle bandwidth any point whatsoever. Besides, IF it were 500GB a month, then that'd be freaking sweet. Besides, 500GB a month is 16GB a day every day. You'd have to be torrenting a storm to get that much.

dagamer34

I live in Greenville, TX, a little town of a mere 30,000 people. However, this little town's government was one of the first in the nation to wise up and they started laying their own network of fiber optics. They then started their own municipally subsidized ISP and cable TV company.

A few ISPs and the only other cable company, Time Warner, complained because of unfair competition or some such because the local government is basically carrying the big weight of the costs of the city's ISP, which by the way besides providing cable TV also provides electricity and trash removal, all on the same bill, at an incredible price.

If it's possible to do here in a town with 30,000 people, it's possible in other places IF the people demand it. We voted on it, we all wanted it, and so far (the past eight years or so,) it's been great.

sandwiches

I use quite a bit of bandwidth per month, and have no problem paying extra to support my share, I'd much rather pay for the bandwidth I'm using than be throttled when I reach some arbitrary limit.

However, the big loss I see with this is that I also run an open WAP so that people can use my internet access if they want to and set up an external antenna so that we have wi-fi at the pool at my apartment complex.

The saddest part about this to me is that charging by the byte could end up being the death of free open wireless.

JeffCarr

Man! I can't believe the level of pissing and moaning in here about this. The reality is, for 90% of people, their bill would probably go DOWN. Do I download a lot? Sure, but I don't mind paying for it. I'm not entirely sure how this is a bad thing if it improves network quality and reduces costs for most people. It's just a few bad apples spoiling the bunch at this point.

That is, unless all the people bitching ARE the bad apples. You know, the kind of people that sue when they get kicked out of the all-you-can-eat buffet for eating all the crab legs.

sardonicbastard

Well, I hear people say that DSL sucks. But as an alternative to this, it isn't bad. I have (AT&T Yahoo) DSL, and I can download about 120Kb/second. Spread over a month and working hard at utilizing that pipe fully, that comes out to a bit over 300 gigabytes/month, for around $20/month. Or about 7 cents per gigabyte. DSL really isn't *that* bad. Just sayin'.

jamstigator

i am a earthlink road runner member i sure hope i'm not affected by this.

i'd go to verizon dsl if i had to, this is total BS. as if we don't have enough BS to worry about in life, there's another cap we have to watch for, so now I gotta be careful on how much sugar i eat, how much greasy food i take in, how much soda i drink, how much gas my car consumes, and now how much my family downloads?

bye TWC if you implement this ridiculous plan

diablofreak

@evan394:

How about using some of last years net income of $7.356 billion? (after a Revenue of $63.055 billion!!)

source:[en.wikipedia.org]

NZRUSS

@whootowl: I know because the price of housing in Bangalore is really fucking everytihg up here. WTF??

evan394

@futaihikage: How can you compare the time it took to phase out floppies and serial ports (used on virtually every computer workstation at some point) with the so called delay in infrastructure change of one internet provider in Texas? Did you happen to think of how that change translated into money spent with the hope of a return?

So you're saying they should've already done all those incredibly expensive things (totally revamping/upgrading their networks accross one of the largest markets that they have) without attempting to generate more income to do it with.

I don't get how you expect them to have paid for all of that without adjusting their pricing schedule.

And now that everyone has gone way overboard on the "totally made-up example" that Matt provided us with, there really is absolutely no actual data in the article except that Time Warner confirmed that they will be testing a new pricing plan in one market. That data comes in the first sencence of his 4 or 5 paragraph post. the rest is all editorial. So jus chill, till the next episode. Read before you bitch.

evan394

@archercc: "kill too many hookes, high lawyer fees" == priceless

lols dude, lols

evan394

I currently live in the US, and am heading back to NZ soon (where they have metered BW like you're about to get). I installed DD-WRT on my WRT-54GL and then put on Bandwidth log (BWLog) which gives a nice webpage summary of total bits in and out, on a monthly or billing cycle period.

I'm probably an intermediate user, I download probably 1 Linux distro a month, read the regular blogs with video, have about 10 audio and 2 video podcasts, i use no bit-torrent. I have 3 machines (2 ubuntu and 1 windows) and game (BF:2) about 6 hours a week. My connection speed is 6Mbps down with Charter Cable and pay about $50 a month.

I use about 8 to 10GB per month.

I'm sure they'll be tiering their pricing so i have to pay extra. I'd be super pissed if I had to.

NZRUSS

Just remember, Giz said that 50GB for $50 was a "totally made-up example, since they haven't released details on the package tiers"

$50 for 50GB probably wouldn't be that bad. The problem is that it will really be more like $75 for 10GB. The only way they make money on this is setting up tiers where most users will opt for it and not use all the GBs (like buying too many minutes on a wireless plan) and by hoping that a lot of people guess buy too small a package and get stuck with overage fees (again, just like wireless plans).

The thing that I worry about is that RR has generally been a pretty good product - the only tiers had to do with the amount of throughput you bought. Now, this really seems like they are changing their business model to be more like the wireless companies who have horrible business models from a consumer-point-of-view.

What's next? Only RR-approved computers?

GusRandall

And Texas was such a nice place =(.. BTW, WTF why are we stepping back in time?

katorok

Funny... This is right off timewarneraustin.com's how to use road runner service in our area. Hmmm... insteresting.

● Music and movie downloads
● TV shows, streaming videos and online games
● Digital photos and video e-mails
● The latest news, sports and entertainment

tulanejosh

I heard that.

tulanejosh

I don't see how we are being babies. We've had a consumer beneficial pricing model for years here. You expect us to jump for joy when they do something that's not even in the same zip code as our best interests, all because they don't want to invest in network upgrades? 60 gb is nothign. Throw browsing all day, working from home, downloading legal content off itunes, watching a Netflix Instant movie or two, gaming online, and you easily burn through that. And its not like I am going to stop any of those things... so how does this help them manage their network? Are they going to invest my "fees" in network upgrades?

tulanejosh

@HeartBurnKid: In simple terms, Time Warner is going to do whatever they can to get more customers without hurting the bottom line. If they find that they have an opportunity to reduce prices for baseline customers, you bet your ass they're going to do it! Broadband is a competetive market, and they're getting undercut by Verizon pretty heavily right now. I pay $44.95/mo for 15m/2m FIOS, and in four months I'm moving to somewhere that TW is the best option- 10m/1m for over $60/mo.

Not only that, the spectre of increased charges for overage will probably do a lot to reduce usage for people that are just using the bandwidth "because it's there." I've been guilty of this- lately I just replaced my old rips of CD's I own with higher bitrate ones, just because it was easier than ripping them all again myself.

As for the overage fees, read the last paragraph of the article summary. If a user has the tools to check their usage and still goes over, it's their own damn fault! This is not a foreign concept to people, as cellphones have been this way for a long time.

I wouldn't mind seeing an option where you get the maximum speed possible, and just get billed for what I use. Maximum burst speeds are a lot more useful than being able to do 5mbit sustained for a whole month.

sardonicbastard

They released details on tiers. 5, 10, 20 and 40 gbs... Boooooooo!

tulanejosh

@sardonicbastard: Haven't you noticed by now? When a corporation makes a big change like this, it's NEVER consumer friendly, especially when it's explicitly defined as a cost-cutting measure (PROTIP: "Cut costs" never get passed on to the consumer; "added expenses" do). Now, I haven't seen Time Warner's pricing on this, but I'm pretty sure it'll go something like this:

Before:
1.5m/384k, unlimited: 34.95
4m/512k, unlimited: 44.95
6m/768k, unlimited: 54.95

After:
1.5m/384k, 10GB cap: 34.95
4m/512k, 30GB cap: 44.95
6m/768k, 60GB cap: 54.95

With who knows what kind of overage fees that you don't know about unless you carefully track your internet.

HeartBurnKid

I live in Australia and to find an "all you can eat" plan is next to impossible.
For $50AU a month, you get around 20GB, and then you're lucky if it's any faster then 1.5Mb.

I would happily pay $50 a month for 50GB, let alone 500GB!

recklessinoz

@xtremesniper: Well, you weren't the one saying we were "babies" for not wanting this. I didn't mean that you, as in Canadians, don't mind taking it up the ass; I was referring specifically to kaos.rox, who seems to think it's an OK situation, and anybody complaining about ending up in a similar arrangement is just whining.

HeartBurnKid

@evan394: The price of real-estate in Bangalore is inversely proportional to American jobs/income. Anyway, let revenue for international bandwidth subsidize our domestic bandwidth. Maybe we'd end up with lots of higher paying jobs are drastically reduced rates for broadband Internet service.

whootowl

Glad you have reasons to just stay the hell out of Texas!!! We don't want your kind here anyway ... probably a tree hugging hippy freak anyway. Bring me my gun, Ma ... there's freaks in them thar hills!

kahibbi

@jrronimo: You stole the words out of my post. If I sell you 2 apples, and only have one, and charge extra for the second apple when finally delivered, fraud is that not?

NoStyle

@tulanejosh: I'd love to see the data on the pricing tiers, and see if, in fact, anybody's bill stands to go down from them. Link?

HeartBurnKid

I did send an email... here is the response i got.

Thank you for your inquiry. I do apologize for the delayed response.
This is only a trial in one market in Beaumont, Texas not Central Texas
Division. This does not affect any Central Texas customers. I will
forward your concerns to our Management Team. If you need any further
assistance please give me a call or an email. Thank you again for the
customer service inquiry.

Oh yeah... I feel so warm and fuzzy. I love that a gig is now more expensive than a gallon of gas, all cuz TWC is trying to force us to keep watching their cable product instead of switching to digital delivery straight from the creators.

tulanejosh

So lets say they do have different tiers, sorta like they have now, but with caps. What I would be worried about is an easier way for ISPs to watch what the highest users (or abusers) download.

pliSkiNAKE

Not all of TX is time warner fyi, comcast came through with their monopoly about 6-9 months ago in Houston. Not like they are any better... anyhow I think that this is another attack on consumers, this is the biggest heap of dog shit I have seen. They use to do this shit with dial up 20 years ago anyone remember that?

STAND UP FOR YOUR SELFS PEOPLE AND MAKE A DIFFERENCE!
SEND AN EMAIL, MAIL A LETTER, GET A DISH, JUST DO SOMETHING. MAKE IT UNDERSTOOD WE ARE NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS SHIT ANYMORE! THIS IS AMERICA! ACT LIKE IT!

Mosher

anyone have a good way to actually monitor their bandwidth usage? Im trying to find a decent tool. I have no clue what I use on a monthly basis - never had a reason to actually care. I know I dont bit torrent, but still. 40 seems on the low end.

tulanejosh

I cant wait for the new TW rollover (get it the arse )data plan package like att's.

azteck

@sebas0069: Pretty sure Bush lives in Maryland...

spyderms

I agree that this is nothing to complain about... You guys have one of the best broadband plans in the world... Australia is remote and pays dearly for that...at least for another couple of years...

simmo

@Fierock: err. "breakthroughs" and "... no consumer WILL benefit from this scheme..."

Fierock

@Sihanouk-s-Poodle:

Their intent would be to increase by profits by slightly lowering revenue while at the same time largely reducing total bandwidth usage. So what do they do with the extra bandwidth, how do they use that to make up for the lost 5% revenue?

By lowering their average monthly rate they could possibly make some new customers, but at the same time it would result in lower revenues from the remaining customer base. I will all comes down to price elasticity - how many people that are not connected would change their minds if it was $40/month instead of $50/month?

Depending on TW's share of the market, their competitors possibly could feel the pain of more competitive rates because it may force them to do the same, because they are not going to simply let their own customers walk. If TW wants to start a price war then all the ISP's would suffer. It may kill off a few smaller ISPs, but it's not going to result in many converted customers.

No, there is no way I see this saving the casual internet user any money. Instead TW would simply sacrifice its high bandwidth users, rather than expand its equipment, to invest in their capacity. Then in another 5 years when the amounts of data we consume is exponentially more than now, they will have an advantage over their flat-rate competitors who've absorbed the bandwidth hogs.

Is this a smart move by TW? maybe, but that all assumes there is no major technological advances or breathroughs during that time, and that the entire industry doesn't follow suit. All I can tell is that no consumers won't benefit from this scheme, but I'm sure some execs will.

Fierock

Ha, ha! Try here in South Africa where the de facto telecom monopoly charches 100 dollars per month for 1 (one) gig at 320 kb/s (speed dwindling after you connected).

Rustydog

With all the new services (Netflix unlimited, iTunes Rentals, Hulu.com, Amazon MP3s, slingbox), bandwidth consumption is going to rise rapidly. But as bandwidth consuming services improve, traditional services will become less relevant. For instance, why pay for a premium channel cable television package (HBO, Showtime, Starz, ect), when the same movies are included with a Netflix subscription -- consumers with a media budget will likely drop larger television packages with channels they don't watch, in favor of higher amounts of bandwidth to access the content they do watch. Consumers will probably spend the same amount of money on media consumption; if TW wants to make the internet more expensive, it will probably come at the expense of their own television division, or for that matter, Time Warner DVD / Blu Ray division.

ianmac47

I think this is simply an attempt by Time Warner to delay the inevitble - the slow transition to a purely digital delivery model. Look at the timing of the announcement - right on the heels of iTunes movie rentals, apple tv, and Netflix unlimited online viewing... Yeah that's not suspicious or anything.

From TWC's perspective, allowing unlimited bandwidth sows the seeds of their own destruction. As we transition from needing cable to watch video content, and get it straight over teh internet - they become merely an ISP - and I bet that scares their board to death. So they cap bandwidth in order to discourage us from using the internet to consume video and instead use their preferred video medium - cable! Sounds kinda anti-trusty to me... arbitrarily dictating how a customer can use a product that has no use guidelines... sketchy at best. I'll bet anything EFF and MoveOn and a vareity of other consumer groups will get involved once the true implications of this are realized. The internet is not about looking at cnn.com or amazon.com anymore. Sure that's part of it, but the essence of web 2.0 is convergence of services - you need bandwidth to do that and without it the internet is a boring place.

tulanejosh

@tulanejosh: If that is the case, they're going about it all wrong. That'd be like a company that makes both horse-drawn carriages and cars limiting their cars' speed to 10 MPH so that they didn't get in the way of their carriage business -- all the while their competitors make unlimited cars available.

Time Warner has a choice -- they can either be "just an ISP" in the future, or they can be just nothing, and let Verizon and their ilk handle the Net.

HeartBurnKid

All this is - is Time Warners answer to the increase in broadband traffic so they can get a piece of the pie instead of investing in next generation technology like Comcast is doing_ Not that I'm a fan of Comcast_

All so that the networks can handle High definition content_ Because I hate to be the stickler here Time Warner - but we ain't going back to the days of 14.4k 2400 baud modems_ Sorry_

uberfu

I live in Texas(Austin)- and ditched T/W for their shoddy service, exorbitant rates and frequent dropouts. GRANDE CABLE ran fiber into my house (with a two man/two hour super cleen install, thru brick) for free and charges $19.99 for their service.

The corporate hubris of T/W seems vaguely reminiscent of some record companies I know...

pejoratus

Welcome to Alaska folks, we've had to live with this kind of stuff for years. How about 89.99 for a 512k DSL line that only runs about about 200k? With a 2GB monthly Cap? I'd kill for 500GBs for 49.99.

AlaskaGuy

I gotta think about this... I understand all of the gamers and such griping about this. What comes to mind is: What about all the self-propagating viruses and PCs turned Zombies by trojans, yadda? Will it equal the high volume torrent users? Probably not. Might it push someone over their cap? You bet. Are you gonna stand for it if some wayward coder just cost you an extra $10, $20 or more because you didn't have up-to-the-second protection and you leave your PC on 24/7? Hell no. Yeah yeah, get anti-virus/malware protection. You know someone doesn't have it or doesn't keep it up to date. It'll happen...

efemall

of course, all of this at a time when bandwidth prices are heading straight downhill at the business level - a good number of tier-1 backbone ISPs are now charging less than $10/Mbps per month for a single GigE commit.

boglegwtf

starting off with "Reason number 149 I won't move to Texas" is reason #1 why i wont read gizmodo anymore. followed by the growing sense of immaturity, seems like gizmodo is trying to hard to make a name for themselves. lets face it gizmodo will never be engadget, peace.

nownot

Reason number 1 we don't want you to move to Texas: You use inane metaphors to try and illustrate simple points. Keep the Creative Writing 101 curriculum and its subscribers in other states.

JAXwithanX

This isnt going to matter just more people will buy hacked cable modems at tcniso. net

transam98

@DARRONE: I'm not a fan of the plan, but your argument is bogus:

"but when u throttle one service, or start charging by the byte, you ruin the entire concept of net neutrality. Its the internet, its supposed to be free."

There's nothing in this that has anything to do with neutrality. They're not talking about throttling or charging more to torrent users, for instance - that would fit. This is a "pay for what you eat", usage disincentive, and it's profit-motivated all around. Sure, they're making tons of money now, and they don't want to spend any more of it than they have to upgrading an infrastructure that *will* get choked eventually.

The US interstate highway system is "free" (well, subsidized). Your access to it (car ownership, fuel, insurance, etc.) is a privilege you pay for. When you say the Internet is supposed to be "free", it sounds more like "beer" than "speech". That's like proposing that somebody should be paying for the differential in your gas and car insurance if you drive more than most people.

ZombieOneZero

this is going to encourage people to steal connection.

lulu321

How does this factor in with VOIP? Will talking all you want on your flat fee for VOIP service shoot your internet bill up too?

Time Warner is pitiful. They have the worst customer service of any company I've encountered. My internet goes out at least once a month for a day or more (and this is in Manhattan!) and you can't even get a person on the phone without waiting on hold for over an hour. Then they don't even have an explanation and tell you to sit tight until they can identify the problem. If my building didn't prohibit it I'd switch to directv and the attendant internet service in a heartbeat. Likewise verizon hasn't brought Fios in yet.

Ugh. Better enjoy the unlimited bandwidth while I can I suppose...

GizmoBub

@sebas0069:
no he left Texas he leaves in DC idiot.

chagocal

most likely this is a gambit to sell more of the time warner internet phone.

I'd be wiling to wager that vonage and other voip will count against the bandwidth, while the time warner internet phone won't.

ari14850

@tulanejosh:
To expand on this, they did release details as to the size of the tiers, but they have not yet put a price to those tiers.

And everything I keep reading claims that this will only impact new customers signing up, which implies that older customers will be grandfathered in without a cap. Hah... hahaha... RIGHT.

Here I thought I was doing them a favor by limiting my download speeds to about half of my cap, and trying to limit my bandwidth usage to keep it under 30 gigs a month. What about people playing on Xbox Live? I've never done anything or seen any numbers as to how much bandwidth that tends to consume, but I imagine it's not an inconsiderable amount. What about Netflix subscribers watching movies online? What if it's a particularly patch heavy month from Microsoft, or I do a reinstall on two computers and need SP2?

There's a lot of reasons why this little money-making scheme sucks, but I'm guessing that they'll get away with it because most of their customers just don't know any better.

linoth

That pay per byte bit is for the birds!

I hope it doesn't pass onto other ISPs.
I purchased the fastest I could where I live, as far as speed goes. Why? Because I plan on doing more than just checking my email.

Im sure the speed was available for that reason as well. And Im sure I pay the high price I do because of what it is.

-Core-

As much as this sounds bad saying as you had unlimited plans before, here in Canada where I live every high speed provider has caps on how much you can download. With Telus DSL I had a combined limit of 60GB for downloading and uploading. Thats why I'm glad now that I live in the dorms at a university because we have crazy fast internet with no limits.

jdotto02

i live in beaumont and all i can say is there is no competition. i guess i will wait and see if their prices are stupidly high and if so go to dsl..... no other option

nakahito

omg i live in beaumont and all i can say is that there is no competition but if i see their prices are stupidly high i will go dsl.

nakahito

All this will do is stifle innovation and actual human progression. You can always count on the telcos and now cable companies of today to be on the wrong side of innovation and against any competition. They are probably able to pull this off because the regulated and unfair competition rules they have for bandwidth and cable providers.

drawkbox

The $200 Billion Broadband Scandal
[www.newnetworks.com]

This book documents the largest fraud case in American history.

The case is simple: Do you have a 45 Mbps, bi-directional service to your home, paying around $40? Do you have 500+ channels and can choose any competitive service? You paid an estimated $2000 for this product even though you did not receive it and it may never be available. Do you want your money back and the companies held accountable?

Background: Starting in the early 1990's, the Clinton-Gore Administration had aggressive plans to create the "National Infrastructure Initiative" to rewire ALL of America with fiber optic wiring, replacing the 100 year old copper wire. The Bell companies - SBC, Verizon, BellSouth and Qwest, claimed that they would step up to the plate and rewire homes, schools, libraries, government agencies, businesses and hospitals, etc. if they received financial incentives.

iamliving

Living in Canada, I'm already under an ISP where my bandwidth is capped. $45 for 6mbit and 60gb, as it were and they are in the process of tracking BW usage and charging for overages. I considered switching, but as the competition told me, my area isn't "wired" for it.

What else I see this capping other than throttling bandwidth usage is limiting the race for faster and better features between the ISPs. I mean, wasn't there a time when the ISPs were racing to give its users more bandwidth, faster speeds and at a lower cost? Now it looks like less bandwidth, little progress on the speeds, costlier, and ridiculous overages (understandably to deter from going over the caps), not to mention packet trafficking.

kintamanate