I can assure that triad.rr.com is throttling bandwidth here in north carolina. I had no problems until 2 weeks ago when I noticed a change in my newsbin configuration and news server. After some serious customer no service I found out that they had indeed started up some new protocol packet shaping. My speeds went from a consistent 5 kbps to disconnect then back up and then back to 0. It defeats the purpose of having roadrunner. If they continue this practice I will have no problem switching back to the local DSL.
jack

I have TWC in Cleveland. I will instantly switch to another provider if they implement caps on my "unlimited" internet service. The ONLY reason I have Cable is for the cable-modem.

The main problem I foresee is that one company starts this junk, ALL will follow, and thus there will be not choice. "Free Market" only exists if someone really cares to differentiate and compete. Overall, I tend to see more corporate collusion on pricing and service-bundling than REAL competition. How often do you see any one provider offer anything very much different than another - or for a much different price? Rare.

Well, I sure hope this doesn't affect my service. Though, I'm sure sooner or later they'll figure a way to make everyone to pay for usage-volume.

So what you're saying is the second they make you actually start paying for the volume you use, you'll find someone who spreads the cost around a bit so that *others* are making up the difference?

Nice.

I bet you want me to pay for your health care too.

Why would anyone even stand for this kind of crap?!?!?!?

If a company decides to limit its users, its time to move to a REAL company.

Dont even waste your time with TimeWarner if they are not even able to handle large bandwith usrs. Useless.

lmao...

You cannot claim to be entitled to something you are unwilling to read the terms of.

Sorry, if you didn't read the terms of service when you signed up (where this is all clearly spelled out), then you are not entitled to squat.

Seriously. Want it clearly spelled out?

You are prohibited from excessive consumption of resources, including CPU time, memory, disk space and session time. You may not use resource-intensive programs, which negatively impact other customers or the performance of Road Runner systems or networks. Road Runner reserves the right to terminate or limit such activities.

It doesn't really get much clearer than that, and no company that intends to remain in business longer than a month is going to have anything less than the above.

Only problem with these policy is it doesn't define anything. What is consider "Excessive"?

Just like the CompUSA policy. Yet it didn't say on the patch match policy, but we just don't patch match anything less than 10% of our price.

What is excessive? Anything that degrades network performance for anyone else.

Since, in cable, this varies *greatly* depending on how many users there are at any given time, there is *no* way you will *ever* get an exact number unless they *seriously* low-ball it.

...is that what you really want? They'll limit you to far less than is actually available to cover their assess if you push them for an exact number.

...and *that* is a guarantee.

If you want a level of service guarantee anywhere near what you *think* you are entitled to on a consumer line, your *only* option is a business plan, and those can get very pricey.

I've got a 50gb download limit within a month and I'm usually within that from anywhere between 30gb-50gb (I download a lot!). But I've been over the limit twice so to speak and had to buy an extra 1gb a couple of times - big deal. I don't live in the US but if Time Warner were to do something similar I can't imagine there'd be too much of a problem, but it all depends on what amount they settle on for a limit - too low and they'll lose customers for sure. But in principle it's not actually as bad as it first sounds really, they just have to get the levels right so they don't cheese off their customers.

Move to China.

Unlimited time and usage.

You simply choose the speed you want to pay for.

Of course there, nobody is pandering "Market Forces" like in the US. It's a monopoly closely regulated by the state for the public/state good. They have a silly idea that having great internet service will result in benefit for China.

Now, if you could get "tax cut" linked to unlimited usage, I'm sure the current rocket scientist on Pennsylvania Ave would be in favor.

Yeah, right... and then have to use proxies to access the sites one wants...

i could see this boosting modem sales
dialup is snail slow but good enough to post on here with .
I think that If a good amount did this it would force the big guys to rethink thier strategy.

I'd like to point out that DirecWay/HughesNet has done this throttling business for some time. You are given a certain a download bucket of sorts (currently 200 MB for the home package I believe), and if you use it all up (it refills at about 5 kB/sec), your connection becomes FAP'd (Fair Access Policy'd, their term, not mine), in which your browsing speed becomes almost nill.

Just moved to neighborhoodwith FIOS precisely to get away from s***ty TW.

Turns out Verizon is pretty s***ty as well-- they have the wires in place but will not provide service yet.

Other options are crappy Comcast or turdy Cablevision.

I wanna move to France, Norway or Japan-- fast speeds at low prices.

Steer clear of Norway.

Broadband may be cheap but everything else is astronomically expensive.

Gotcha.

What idiot thinks that "unlimited" doesn't mean inexhaustible, since that's how these plans are marketed? So stop pulling a toolie by trying to tell me the ISPs' mean "unlimited" as available 24/7. Only a fool would think that an ISP would only give you service from 6a-10p, and no ISP has ever set daily time limits on bandwidth availability.

So please, let's stop that horse hockey right now. Time Warner is just like every other ISP and they want to save money on network upgrade costs. Instead of buying new equipment to service increasing loads, their idea is to throttle current users' bandwidth. In other words, you pay the same high cost, but get less service every month while Time Warner gets a fat stock erection for a day.

If you have one of these companies, dump them now. However, in amerika, it's increasingly hard to find any corporation who understands the English language, much less what unlimited means.

LOL you manage to pick on Toolie, even though on the same side of the argument.

It usually does no good responding to him. He's the biggest hit-and-run poster we have here. :)

lmao..

Unlimited, as in 24/7, as in "always on", as opposed to dial-up, which is on demand.

Sometimes, I think God made you retarded just for my entertainment. You couldn't possibly be this stupid without mental retardation, could you?

His brain no workie, either...

Still it's entertaining.

Exactly, stop this "i dont wanna pay for network upgrades" crap from our ISP's. That is total bullsh*it. Pay more for less service.

Go to hell TimeWarner.

Welcome to the UK's ways of the internet.

It's been like that for as long as I can remember here.

Most ISPs have a download limit and if you exceed you'll be charged.

If you have 'unlimited' download capacity then in reality you have 50GB (unless otherwise stated), which it points out in the ToS, before your connection will be throttled to almost nothing.

guess they need to head off the onslaught of competition from Apple TV, M$ Xbox Live, and Sony on demand services.

If you want to download movies, you are going to have to pay AT&T under the guise of "heavy bandwidth" usage. Interesting to see if those caps are not going to apply to AT&T online services.

People actually use Apple TV? No way.

Does this mean, if I don't use up the the limit, I will get a refund?

When they said unlimited, it means unlimited. I am not saying up for something say unlimited and in reality unlimited only if you use under X amount.

If they do that, I will drop this and switch to DSL.

Does this mean, if I don't use up the the limit, I will get a refund?

lol or do like cingular/att does or did with it's roll over minutes.

i think unlimited should be just that. it use to be companies did this with dial up to keep people from acting as a file server(torrent). now days you can stream tv, radio and other things that aren't data related that chews up bandwith. tw will tell you on there tv ad's that you can watch tv on your pc. lol there they are promoting using bandwith and then on the other hand want to take it away.

Time Warner reportedly has already been implementing such a policy, although it has officially denied any type of throttling.

Even if they don't admit they do it it is written in their policy on their website that they may.

http://help.rr.com/HMSFa...erf.aspx?topic=Policies

You are prohibited from excessive consumption of resources, including CPU time, memory, disk space and session time. You may not use resource-intensive programs, which negatively impact other customers or the performance of Road Runner systems or networks. Road Runner reserves the right to terminate or limit such activities.

Comcast has almost exactly the same policy in their ToS.

Add to that the fact that people hear spoken English in an ad and still utterly fail to comprehend it.

"Unilimited" usually refers to the availability of the connection (24/7), "6Mb" (or whatever) usually refers to the *maximum* throughput, etc...

Of course, they hear "unlimited" and "6Mb" and think it is some sort of guarantee that they can download as much as they want and should get 6Mb throughput at all times....

Yeah... Ya know, I think "the" means "you owe me money". Rarely ever seems to be true though....

Yeah, how dare people think...... Nothing good will come of it. Don't they understand Lawyerese? [rolleyes]

Agreed. If the 6mb were guaranteed why the hell would anyone ever use T1 lines anymore?

Sorry, "Up to 6Mb" is plain English. Sorry you apparently didn't pas the third grade reading level.

Lucky you passed the putting up with any corporate BS grade.

That's the point, most people don't pay attention and don't hear the "up to" part. They hear 6Mb, and then if they don't get 6Mb, they complain.

Oh and don't get me started with the Megabit and Megabyte crap they pull. :P

That was my original point....

You're right. I should just bury my head in the sand and follow the herd instead of actually educating myself on the actual terms of the service I pay $80 a month for like everyone else.

At least I'd have plenty of company...

Right, I saw both posts and then posted to the second out of context. My Bad. :-)

The "up to 6Meg" in the terms is pretty clear, just burried in some of the other legalieze. However, it is also almost always in the fine print of any print or online adverts. All the consumer needs to do is pull out a magnifying glass and read it, it's pretty clear. The problem, I think we agree, is that most people don't bother reading what is in front of thier face. :-)

The problem is they don't bother to read the terms of a service they are paying through the nose for and then blame the "Company" for the disconnect between their fantasy world and reality that inevitably ensues.

Heavy users of bandwidth have recently found their connections throttled, and in some cases disconnected altogether.

3 times so far this week from Charter Communications.

I'm about ready to switch back to DSL.

lol, wow!

If Time Warner ups the speeds to "darn fast," then I'll be willing to take a data transfer (NOT bandwidth) quota. If I transfer a lot of data, it's only fair that I pay for it.

Your already paying for it as it is... If they want to limit usage they need to change there model completely. I pay for use by the month not by the byte. it's 24/7 and I should be able to use it 24/7 as thats what I'm paying for.
There taking a play right out of Cell Phone companies collection of RAPPING anyone who actually uses what they are paying for already.
Why don't they just be upfront with there services in the first place.

Why don't they just be upfront with there services in the first place.

Looks like they are trying to remedy this now. These previously undocumented "caps" are about to become very well documented.

There taking a play right out of Cell Phone companies collection of RAPPING anyone who actually uses what they are paying for already.

I've never seen Cell phone companies rapping. Anyone. Anywhere. I should know. I hate rap. (except for Run-DMC. They're okay...)

my cell phone company rapps only when somebody calls me :-)

but seriously i pay comcast for tv/internet $120 a month, if they charge me MORE for using what I already pay for I wont know what to do, I'm addicted to bootytorrents.com

TW just doesn't get it. As a former employee I know. It shows in their stock price. They don't care about credibility of services or their customers...just the bottom line. Their current customers will just go somewhere else...where it's cheaper and faster...just like AOL users did.

Idiots!!

Yeah, but that's hard to do in the broadband world. How many choices are actually available in every area ... maybe two at most (Verizon and Cable company) and it's going to be in both their interests to cap service.

Well where I am, TW turned into Brighthouse, and it went downhill. Service sucks, customer support sucks, and their equipment especially sucks.