RSSTime Warner Cable responds to bandwidth cap complaints with price cap plan
By Jacqueline Emigh | Published April 10, 2009, 1:21 PM
In a statement this morning, Time Warner COO Landel Hobbs announced a $150-per-month pricing tier for high volume users, which he says is meant to stem user complaints over Time Warner's tests of capped bandwidth usage.
"We've heard the passionate feedback and we've taken action to address our customers' concerns," according to Hobbs. In a controversial early trial in Beaumont, Texas, Time Warner has been charging customers between $29.95 and $54.90 a month based on data consumption and connection speed. Customers have then been charged an extra $1 for each gigabyte over their plan limit. The ISP had planned to use the same general price structure in an expanded trial of capped bandwidth usage in the cities of Rochester, N.Y., Greensborough, N.C., and San Antonio and Austin, Texas.
But now, in the four new test cities, high volume users will be offered a 100 GB Road Runner Turbo package for $75 per month with speeds of 10 Mbps downstream / 1 Mbps upstream. The Turbo package also calls for a $1 per GB overage charge. But all overage charges will be capped at $75 per month, so that for $150 per month, usage will be virtually unlimited.
Time Warner will also test a pricing tier for light Internet users offering 1 GB per month for $15 at speeds of 768 / 128 Kbps, with an overage fee of $2 per extra GB.
In addition, the ISP is stepping up the bandwidth tier sizes included in all existing packages to 10, 20, 40 and 60 GB for its Road Runner Lite, Basic, Standard and Turbo packages, while retaining the same pricing. Time Warner will also charge overage fees of $1 per GB per month on those plans.
Trials of the new pricing tiers announced today are slated to start in Rochester and Greensborough in August, and in San Antonio and Austin in October.
TW has too many customers.. I switched to ATT U-verse and will not look back unless ATT starts down this path.
Score: 0
|Such angst, pathos and adolescent incredulity. LOL!
Here's a sugestion sure to confuse many...if you don't like either the TOS, the servie itself, or the company, sign up with another company.
I would worry about the tragic issue here, but I am too busy laughing...
Score: -1
|I live in an area with a good per square
foot credit rating and so for me at this
place--Yeah, I got choices but most 'em
are quite non tolerable and one seems
much worse----they seem to be saying
that they will take down all the copper
and seems like this is for two reasons:
1) redacted
2) For most? Most can't afford to restring
the copper and so _Can't switch away
from them.
Score: 0
|Ok. Let's see my choices are....one cable company, or one phone company. Tons of choices to choose from.
Score: 0
|Your choices are many and varied.
Next you're going to tell us you (or your parents) had no say in where you live, right?
Nah, the choice was there, but I seriously doubt ISP's were even a consideration....but that's not *your* fault, right? That's the ISP's fault...
Poor guy.... Such a victim.
Score: -4
|Damn you are stupid... So you expect people to just get up and move every time a company decides to start screwing you? Grow up!
Score: 3
|*laughing*
Yes. I do, if it's important enough to start throwing around stupid, "I don't have any choices" whining and accusations of monopoly (which is a complete joke), then yes. Move. You have a virtually unlimited number of choices.
quote: gawd21"ph***"
Grow up, indeed.
Score: -2
|I am a TW cust, and although I have stopped downloading all that illegal crap, I still think this is way over the top. I can understand if instead of speed, they used the bandwidth as a measure of price, but they are using 1.5 down and a 5 GB cap (and so on). so essentially reducing the way we want to live (watch shows, movies, you tube, etc online,) I have the 7 Mb down and I don't get bad service, but it seems they are trying to keep me from watching shows on fox.com for example, and use the on demand from TV.
I have never used it, but if I did, I don't really like being corralled into service. I like using it they way I want. T00L, it is not for entitlement you SS@! We pay for the service. I pay for the service. I just don't want to pay more for the same thing. this is the supply/demand issue. Unfortunately, they have paid the ceo and upper staff so much and funded their service so little. While I am sure what they do fund is quite a large number, it is apparent that it is not enough.
Cut off newsgroups, torrents, & other ways that users share movies, music, porn and software. this will open up more bandwidth. but limiting bandwidth seems so backwards thinking.
Score: 0
|ph*** TimeWarner and Comcast! They offer over priced crap and now they cap it to charge more, and you little biotches will sit back and let them. Does anyone remember the Boston Tea Party? Anyone? Hmm I always knew that people were getting stupid and are willing to bend over and let anyone ph*** them in the butt. Hell you even let a monkey run the country... Need I say more?
Score: 0
|What in teh **** did the Boston Tea Party have to do with Internet access, you ignorant twat?
(See, I can be a vulgar jackass too!)
*laughing*
Seriously...Boston Tea Party... You cannot *possibly* be that retarded.
Score: -4
|PC Tool, Are you for real? Could you be that stupid as to not know or understand what the BTP and this have in common?
EDIT: OMG Dude... I have always thought better of you!
Score: 1
|*laughing*
OK, I'll bite...how is this *at all* even close to the Boston Tea Party? Really, I'm curious as to the depth of your delusional mental acrobatics here...
Boston Tea Party: Protest against taxes levied by a government they had *zero* say in and *zero* ability to influence.
TWC: An Internet Service Provider. One of many. They have nothing to do with taxes, are an optional service you are not forced to use/subscribe to, and has no influence on your income beyond that which you *freely* give them.
Yeah, the similarities are startling. I'm so....startled. ;-) I can't believe I missed how a protest against taxes and a company offering a new service level we're so much alike!
...but feel free to toss your computer in the nearest sizable body of water.
Score: -2
|Damn you are small minded! You don't see that it is how people that aren't willing to pay more so they dumped it. You are one of the stupidest people that I have had the chance to read.
Score: 1
|"Didn't want to pay more"
Oh my dear lord....
That could apply to *anything* and *that* is your argument as to how it "compares" to the Boston Tea Party?
Are you serious?
*laughing*
Hell, man... even I didn't think you were *that* stupid. Gee, let's pick some random event in history and compare it to some completely unrelated current event and tie them together with something as ludicrous as "it costs too much!"
Proof that absurdity knows no bounds...
Score: -2
|I am all for Time Warner charging whatever they want so long as the FCC renders the local franchises nul and void and then requires open competition across the board. The problem is that there are many areas where TW or Comcast are the only high speed providers and this schema is being protected by local government entities.Force TW to go up against Comcast or Cox or AT&T or any real competition and lets see how long those rates last. A free market with plenty of healthy competition is the American way - not some schema that provides all the protection offered public utilities, yet little regulation against gouging.
Score: 1
|Right on. Theres the answer to the problem competition.
We need more choices in our area.
Score: 0
|So cable/dsl companies can start charging for all the TV and movies people watch while online. Actually its not a bad business model as people will naturally move away from conventional TV over to internet TV (iptv). If that iptv is on the public internet you will pay in bandwidth if that iptv is over a private network like uverse then you will still pay. Either way you pay for usage. It isn't unreasonable until they start lowering the caps too low, like cell phones already are. Usage caps can help or hurt, depends how they are implemented. Cell companies have them implemented very poorly.
Score: -1
|Talk about a freaking ripoff!
Score: 2
|Why do you want to talk about bailouts in this thread? ;-)
Score: -2
|Yet right now for me, I get 20 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up for about $55 a month from them... so my download speed gets cut in half AND they're charging me an extra $120 a month to get what I have now... time to start looking at the competing companies.
Score: 0
|..or you could just stick with your existing plan?
Do you honestly use more than 100GB/month? I can actually see this as a possibility (just hit 89GB lat month myself), but it's still quite rare.
Our 250GB limit seems much harder to reach...I suppose if we ever do connect all of our TV's to Media-PCs, we *might* hit it if we start watching 1080 only (720 is our current 'fave'), but even then, am I the only person willing to actually *pay* for the outrageous amount of bandwidth I use?
Score: -2
|If you Download torrents and upload, 250 gb is easy to easy. I got in trouble from comcast in December for having 554gb of usage. More than double their cap. I signed up for unlimited internet, not unlimited unless you exceed usuage. Their solution was to have me install a T1 line at my house for $1,500/month. Great solution?
Score: -1
|*laughing*
Victimized by your own failure to read the ToS or the fine print? Poor guy...
Sorry bud, "Unlimited" does not and never has referred to throughput, bandwidth, or anything else but the "availability of the connection" as opposed to on-demand dial-up.
554gb, huh? That kind of usage is absurd and even if it's for legitimate purposes you *need* a business SLA.
Score: 0
|250GB div 30 is 8.3G/day.
A couple of 720p H264 vids are about
1.2G and 40 min. 30M/min. (ehh)
(1920 by 1080) div (1280 by 720) is 2.25
giving: 1080p is about 67M per minute.
This gives an h264 encoded 1080p limit
of about 122 minutes per day of watching
a competitor's stuff, or, in a two screen
household about one hour per screen.
Last time I looked H264 gave smaller files
than XVID which I hear turns a 1 gig vob
into about 350 megs with no visible loss
in quality, but with a definite increase in
CPU use for playback.
Score: 0
|These prices actually seem fair to me. 95% of the people don't need more than 50GB transfer a month, so there's no reason they should be sponsoring the 5% of the "abusers" (myself one of them).
Now of course Comcast has much better prices (possibly too low - if our interest as consumers is to get even faster int'l networks sooner), so I would expect some answer from Time Warner as to why they need to charge so much more. I suspect TW's territory is simply more expensive to serve, but that definitely needs to be looked into by the FCC. If FCC says prices are OK, then it's probably just fine... FCC has been pretty good about protecting consumer interests while looking at the overall picture incl eyesight on the future of communications...
In other words, if the FCC can say: no problem, continue charging as much as you want, but allocate X percent of profits from internet sales into boosting your network within next 5yrs -- then I see no problem. The techie-heads that'll spend $150 a month on internet do deserve an even faster network. TW will make MUCH MORE PROFITS on them than on the very-low-end internet subscriptions.
Score: -2
|Didn't the CEO of TWC just get a Multi-Million Dollar Bonus that would make AIG envious? I wonder hou much the COOs bonus was? They need people to pay TWC's outrageous prices to protect their way of life. Hey, can you blame the guys? Times are tough and there are a lot of people picking those hard working CEOs and COOs. Why can't you just pay up and let these poor rich guy alone?
Score: 0
|*laughing*
Lord knows the CEO and COO's didn't go through decades of education, numerous degrees, hard work and plenty of talent and ability to *get* to that point, right?
Why shouldn't the drones flipping burgers make just as much, right?
Or is this just another shining example of entitlement and class-envy? ;-)
Score: -3
|Maybe, they got there by not being able to do a real job correctly and they were continually promoted so they wouldn't interfere with the real work. It's amazing to me when they get in front of a committee or judge that they don't know or can't remember but then again, they're the boss and they don't do anything but waste money. Of course, they can't remember what the company was actually doing at the time.
I'm so happy to see Time-Warner is not available to me.
Score: 2
|lmao...
"they were continually promoted so they wouldn't interfere with the real work"
I do believe that's the absolute dumbest thing I've heard all week. Congratulations!
Score: -4
|take a look at your senior Government People that are not elected. I bet a lot have gotten there by incompetence.
Score: 1
|OMG...
Government != Private Sector (TWC), genius.
Try to at least keep on topic a little bit?
Score: -1
|So, Time-Warner brags in their shareholder's report about how their broadband costs are actually decreasing. And at practically the same time we have...this. My prediction? Lots of new DSL subscribers in TWC's markets.
Score: 1
|Thank god for AT&T U-verse!!
Score: 1
|Sorry, I meant to say, We don't accept this deal from TWC.
Score: 1
|I'm not accepting this from TWC. We are in a recession, and you want to gain customers by doing this? I'd take DSL over paying TWC for these ridiculous caps.
Score: 1
|$75 a month for Internet access??? You're F'n kidding right???
What, are we back to the mid 90's when we had to pay by the minute for dialup?
Score: 6
|I would move first to an apartment that offered FIOS before I pay TWC for their crap. Greedy SOB's. They are definitely anti-competitive since they know people in apartments can take or leave it they know the got you and you don't have a choice. Dishnetworks commercial are spot on. Less for more.
Score: 1
|Unfortunately, the FIOS rollout is not moving as fast as anyone would like in Time Warner's coverage areas.
Score: 2
|"Less for more."
Ah, the clarion cry of the entitled masses... God forbid you be told to pay according to actual usage.
Score: -3
|yano wouldent mind paying for what I got if they were charging even close to what it cost. 150 dollars a month is extortion, 50 dollars a month for unlimited at a 10/1 speed would be reasonable, (although not as cheap as our japanese freinds) and then go upwards in price for the turbo plans, then 5 bucks a month for 1gb, 10 for 5gb, and up from there. They way they got it now, I might as well take a step back in technology to avoid overages, eg renting physical HD movies instead renting through Itunes and ps network like I was.
Score: 0
|blah blah blah....
I pay $150 a month for Comcast's highest tier in Minneapolis. I believe it is capped @ 250GB. Am I being extorted? Because I could have *sworn* I actually signed up willingly...without a gun to my head or anything.
Faster doesn't equal *more*, you entitled imbeciles, it just means "Faster". (...50mbit vs 10mbit isn't actually "faster, but that's probably getting too technical for the dimwits here....)
Score: -4
|I don't think Time Warner proposed rates are reasonable but I don't think your proposal is quite realistic either. The only reason most residential ISPs have been able to have 'unlimited' plans for so many years was that most people used the service so little. As more and more people use the Internet to watch video the cost to maintain quality of service goes up. They could keep raising the rates to appease the ~1-5% of users that are using most of their bandwidth or they can impose some sort of bandwidth caps. You can't blame them for choosing the latter since they are going to see a more dramatic reduction in their bandwidth usage than the lost revenue.
If you think $150 for Internet access is extortion you should check what a dedicated connection like a DS3(T3) or a T1 connection costs. Most businesses with a T1 line are paying a lot more than $50 a month for a downstream connection that is a lot slower than 10 megabits.
Score: 0
|