Time Warner to add Internet meters for S.A.

Time Warner to add Internet meters for S.A.

By David Saleh Rauf - Express-News
When Bryan Lee wants to see just how much bandwidth his Internet connection gobbles up, he logs on to a Web site that tracks his usage on a daily basis.
The 31-year-old project manager for a Dallas-based software company is one of Time Warner's proverbial guinea pigs in the cable company's ongoing test of metered service in Southeast Texas.
Before moving to Lumberton, a small town about 12 miles north of Beaumont, he enjoyed unfettered downloads. Nowadays, his monthly usage is capped at 40 gigs. And there's an extra incentive in place to make sure he's keeping downloads and video streams in check: overage fees.
“I look at the meter probably once a week,” he said. “It really changes your mind-set with this whole overages thing. You become fearful of going on the Internet.”
After bowing to backlash from customers and Congress over plans to change pricing for Internet usage, Time Warner Cable is moving forward with plans to outfit customers in San Antonio and three other markets with similar measurement tools.
The cable company is hoping the “gas gauges” will make it easier to eventually try again at implementing a billing structure that charges customers varying rates based on Internet usage.
For now, the city's largest Internet and cable provider is mum on the measurement technology that it says is part of an overall “education” strategy. A Time Warner spokesman recently declined to provide details on how the meters will work or when they could arrive in the Alamo City.
But Lee says customers in the Beaumont area were provided with an account to the company's “self care” Web site. Once logged in, customers can navigate the site to check daily usage, measured with bar graphs, and to see how many gigs they have left before overages kick in. The meter does not provide information about individual downloads, Lee said.
Critics of the bill-by-the-byte business model say bandwidth caps are a strategy to deter users from accessing high-definition video streams that can detract from Time Warner's main source of revenue: cable subscriptions. But supporters say something has to be done to prevent a small group of heavy users from slowing the Internet experience for everyone else. Metered billing, they say, is a solution to that problem.
“There is no magic to understanding that you can't have an all-you-can-eat buffet if one person is taking all the food,” said Steve Effros, a telecom analyst and former president of the Cable Telecommunications Association. “Most people are going to find they don't need unlimited use.”

Time Warner to add Internet meters for S.A.

[Dasher]

Those bastards at time warner said they weren't going to do this after all. now they changed their minds?

Well it's a good thing I dont' have time warner or I'd really be screwed. If I were Dish Network i would jump on this immediately!

[Bud]

Everything that comes out of TW's mouth is FUD, FUD, FUD. You can't use up the internet. Brownouts will not occur. 10% of customers do not use 50% of the network. Lies, lies, lies.

All they want to do is keep people from leaving their cable services to watch TV on the net. And the only reason that lines could be strained in the future is their insistence on cutting investment, especially the easier to maintain DOCSIS 3.0, while their gains go up every quarter.

San Antonio needs Cablevision or FIoS. I'm tired of San Antonio supporting a freaking cartel

[Jason R]

That would be believable if a good deal of other service providers weren't also shifting to internet metering. The same claims of small percentages taking most of the bandwidth are being made by several providers, and AT&T is experimenting with metering as well.

[Bud]

The providers are all catching onto the scheme and seeing dollar signs.

Time Warner got the hint that no one would be happy paying a whole lot more for internet access, so they temporarily dropped plans for it to 're-educate' customers. This is really a ploy to try to set up agreements with other providers to also jump into tiered pricing so that the competition doesn't eat them alive.

Want proof of how false Time Warner's reasons are for switching to tiered pricing? Check out their quarterly statement. With regards to their broadband products, their profits are through the roof, their customer base has expanded, and their investment costs continue to decrease. Yet their business model currently is unsustainable? It's a flat out lie.

And now that we've said we don't want tiered pricing, Time Warner now says that the planned DOCSIS 3.0 upgrade will not be happening, even though the same quarterly specifically says that the only place they planned on doing those upgrades was in New York anyway. What people don't understand is that implementing DOCSIS 3.0 is dirt cheap for Time Warner, and actually make maintaining their network easier and allows for dynamic expanding of pipes to accommodate spikes in traffic. It would be a complete win-win for both consumer and provider.

Again, San Antonio, despite being the 7th largest city in the country, is in a stagnant broadband market. There is no competition, and we're suffering for it. Come on Cablevision or Verizon!