Time Warner Cable new broadband caps, $150.00 a month for unlimited use

[Kubiatsu]

Time Warner cable has revealed its intentions with its newly tested broadband caps. The short of it is that if you want "unlimited" internet it will cost you a staggering $150.00 a month.

The pricing structure breaks down as follows:

• A limited package for "light users" at 1GB/month, 768KB down / 128KB up, with overage charges of $2/GB/month.
• Road Runner Lite, Basic, Standard, and Turbo packages at 10GB / 20GB / 40GB / and 60GB caps, respectively, and overage charges at $1/GB/month.
• 100GB Turbo package at $75/month with overage fees of $1/GB, which, when coupled with that magic threshold of $75 in charges, becomes the "unlimited" plan.

The days of using Hulu or Pandora for free may be over as the caps could cause you to start paying a lot more for their services. Don't even think about streaming HD movies from Netflix or downloading them from Xbox Live either!

Even more annoying for webmasters may be the revenue lost from advertisements. Many companies are now using flash based movies, all of which can eat a lot of bandwidth over the span of the month, which may force users to start blocking ads for fear of blowing their caps.

Time Warner is walking on thin ice here as it may lose high paying customers in droves. It's not your mom and pop type families that provide most of the revenue, it's the hardcore users who have the highest speed of internet, HDTV, DVR, and a couple premium channels that TWC may lose, by the boat load.

http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/04/14/twc-new-broadband-caps-15000-a-month-for-unlimited-use

[Barachiel]

Hahhaaha, rofl roflmao rofl rofl rofltrain roflerskatez.

I pay 10$ for Unlimited 100/100 Mbit/s (12 500 kB/s DL/UL)
Sweden <3

Once again. ROFL ROFL ROFL

[Kubiatsu]

WTB Sweden. I live in UK but I don't think we can get anything higher than about 10mb, and definately not for $10 lol.

[MelonFarmer]

Boo, I have TWC, you might as well get satellite... lolz

[Phygar]

Wow, I hated TWC's guts even before this, this is just great! I hope they go out of business.

[Kubiatsu]

I bring a good news update!

After a public outcry and the attention of several members of Congress, Time Warner Cable has stopped its trial of Internet data caps, but not before making "metered billing" a tough sell for all other American ISPs.

Time Warner Cable said repeatedly that it wanted to hear from the public as it expanded its Internet data caps, and the public has roared back its response: metered billing should exist in some non-obscene ratio to cost and to competitors' pricing. In response, TWC will shelve the trials "while the customer education process continues."
The plan to expand the test into North Carolina and New York survived in public for two weeks, and not even TWC's decision to dramatically boost the caps a week into the fracas could stop the anger. Not that the company believes anything about the plan was fundamentally misguided; as CEO Glenn Britt put it today, "There is a great deal of misunderstanding about our plans to roll out additional tests on consumption based billing."


That "misunderstanding" went all the way to the top. Congressman Eric Massa (D-NY) last week announced his plan to introduce a bill placing limits on the ability of companies like TWC to cap its connections, especially in areas where it was a virtual monopoly. But it took a heavier hitter—in this case, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY)—to make TWC change its ways.
Schumer announced his own opposition to the plan, then spoke with Britt about the "overwhelming opposition" to the caps. Citizens of Rochester, New York were furious about the caps about to be imposed on them, with Schumer's office describing the reaction as "outrage." The company relented.
Massa and Schumer were thrilled with the decision to cancel the trial program. "We're delighted that commonsense prevailed," said Massa today. "The people of Western New York spoke and I heard them loud and clear. Together we have won and I am glad that I was able to play a small part in bringing about this change. This is a true grassroots victory, but we will move forward with our legislation to ensure that any future plans to charge customers based on how much they download do not spring up anywhere else."
Massa's legislation may stand little chance of success on its own, but Schumer's office says that the senator will continue keeping an eye on the issue of caps, too, in order to make sure that "any future changes in Internet pricing are in line with what the community wants and needs." Translation: we have our eye on you.
Glenn Britt rather diplomatically noted that TWC "look[s] forward to continuing to work with Senator Schumer, our customers and all of the other interested parties as the process moves forward."


Textbook overreach

The whole fiasco looks like a textbook example of overreach. Even groups like Free Press accept metered billing as a fair system (so long as the connection remains "neutral"), so all the American ISPs had to do in order to reframe user expectations was roll out a pricing structure that wouldn't utterly outrage the public.

(Hint: when Comcast currently offers a 250GB/month cap for around $42.95, and the price of Internet backbone traffic is dropping by 50 percent a year, and DOCSIS 3.0 updates cost only $20-$100 per customer, and TWC's finances showed big upticks in broadband revenue even as costs plunged—well, selling a 100GB/month cap for $75 was hardly going to go down well, especially when your industry is one of the least-popular in the US.)

So, failing in that simple mission, TWC may have just scotched other interesting experiments in metered billing being done by big ISPs, who can't be at all thrilled by the way that TWC handled the situation. In addition to backing away from its own caps, Congress will now consider a bill on the subject, Chuck Schumer will keep an eye on ISPs, and metered billing is now associated with "price gouging" in the public mind.

As for Beaumont, Texas, the town with the dubious honor of being capped by both AT&T and TWC, the long nightmare may soon be over.
Free Press had already rallied its troops to petition Congress over the matter, and campaign director Timothy Karr was enthusiastic about TWC's decision. "We're glad to see Time Warner Cable's price-gouging scheme collapse in the face of consumer opposition," he said. "Let this be a lesson to other Internet service providers looking to head down a similar path. Consumers are not going to stand idly by as companies try to squeeze them off the Internet. This is a major victory, but the fight for a fast, open and affordable Internet is far from over."

Kyle McSlarrow, who heads the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, insists that TWC did everything right, and he thanks them for being open and transparent throughout the process.

"None of us knows with certainty what works best for consumers," he noted today in a blog post. "As broadband providers, we face daunting and ever-changing challenges in ensuring that we do our level best to provide consumers with what they want, when they want it. But our goal has been, is, and will be to communicate with our customers in an open and transparent manner; to try new models that can be used to attract new broadband users and more equitably spread costs among high and low volume users, and—at the end of the day—to let the consumer make the ultimate choice of whether new models survive and thrive or are thrown into the dustbin of history."

Well, consumers have spoken, and they're giving the cable industry a hand hoisting that dustbin lid.

[Barachiel]

Feel free to drool.

[Liquid Malfunction]

wtf I got way more bandwidth and get 40kb up and 20 kb down (my isp is teh suck)

[Greed]

I thought Time Warner became Comcast, or it did here in Texas anyway.

[Cush]

WTB Sweden. I live in UK but I don't think we can get anything higher than about 10mb, and definitely not for $10 lol.

Im in the UK and I have 24mb for a decent price, about 20 squids a month if I remember right. Unlimited use. They are starting to install fibreoptics in different areas also.

Also, ONE GB/MONTH!?!?! Are they crazy? How much does that cost?

My torrent list for the PAST SIX DAYS adds up to over 35gb, I don't think I'd do well with a limit :/ Bethere ftw, although I dont get the most out of my connection due to being more than a mile from the exchange.

[Duplicity]

I have Comcast, 250gb/month

6mb down, 900 Up.

But, my cable box limits it to... 700 Down 110 Up..

**** you comcast.

[Kubiatsu]

Cush which company are you with? I'm looking to get a new connection and yours sounds like a good deal.

[Barachiel]

Don't get any ISPs with caps. Tell them to **** off and take an ISP without restrictions.

[Gripen2]

24mb/s but goes as 5mb/s on speed test.

[GrecoISU]

I hate Time Warner... I can't wait for FIOS to get to my area!