Time Warner Cable scraps broadband capping plan in Rochester, NY
By Donald Melanson 
posted Apr 16th 2009 3:22PM
posted Apr 16th 2009 3:22PM
It's already delayed its controversial broadband capping plan in a number of markets, and it looks like Time Warner Cable has now gone one big step further in Rochester, New York (one of the initial test markets), where it has reportedly scrapped the new tiered pricing plan altogether. As you no doubt recall, the plan was more or less modeled on cellphone pricing plans, and had intended to cap customers' data usage at a certain level and charge upwards of $1 per GB for any overages (eventually maxing out at $150 per month). That, naturally, didn't go over so well with folks, and even New York Senator Charles Schumer eventually got in on the act and complained directly to Time Warner Cable. Of course, this still doesn't officially mark the end of the pricing plan in other markets, but it certainly seems to be getting increasingly difficult for Time Warner Cable to move ahead with it.[Thanks, Phil]
Update: As a few of you have helpfully pointed out in comments, Time Warner Cable has now put out a statement of its own that confirms in not-at-all Orwellian terms that it is shelving all of its consumption-based billing trials "while the customer education process continues." The company also says that it'll soon be making bandwidth measurement tools available to customers, which it hopes will "aid in the dialog going forward."
Just goes to show you what word of mouth is capable of.
This just made my week :-D
Public opinion wins the day, take that TWC and your BS practices. Alright other ISPs take a good long look at what happened here before you try the same shit!
Time Warner is LOSING customers to FIOS Verizon.
I'm one of them.
Besides the fact that Speakeasy.net reports prove FIOS in off peak and peak times is multiple times faster than TW cable (and I've done tests myself. My Fios gets 18,000Kbps down and 8000 Up during PEAK - while TW Cable is usually around 9000down 1000 up on the 5 different locations I've tried) FIOS offers more and costs less.
NOW that NY'rkers have a choice... We are gonna give TW hell.
Quantum, I hope we get that choice where I live. It's either TW or DSL. They haven't tried capping here yet. Maybe public opinion really will win.
@Kal
-True.
"while the customer education process continues."
Sounds like TWC was the one that got learnt here.
"while the customer education process continues."
I read that as: "while we create fake internet brownouts to convince customers that these caps are necessary"
Ok....that battle ended easily....a little TOO easily if you ask me (which you didn't, hehe).
What concerns me more though is their comment about "while the customer education process continues."
Um....yeah.....I'm sorry, but I don't really see what more I could possibly be educated in how horrible the idea of a bandwidth cap on a landline service is.
Also, I'd trust any kind of bandwidth monitoring tool they could provide about as far as I could physically throw it. It just seems way too easy to me for them to have the tool fudge the results a bit to "prove to people that they don't use as much bandwidth as they thought so caps wouldn't be such a bad thing," then institute the caps and start springing nasty little surprises on people as their REAL bandwidth usage is being tallied instead.
(yes I know, where's my tin-foil hat, lol)
AWESOME news. Keep it up everyone!
StopTheCap.com is reporting that they are getting rid of the proposed caps in _all_ markets, not just Rochester
Yeah I saw that too....they don't seem to cite a source for it though other than the guy claims he was there when it was announced.
I hope it's true though...gotta stop this snowball while it's still little.
It's funny that they're basing this off cellphone practices, cellphone companies are some of the most loathed in the world.... and they're moving away from tiered pricing and towards unlimited in many areas aside from wireless internet for computers.
Yep, let's hope TWC and others learn a lesson here.
...and TWC, if you try to continue pulling this shit, the internet will destroy your market. Take heed. The Geeks run the digital world. Our friends, family, and fellow nerds take advice and heed our warnings--when we leave, we'll take those friends, families and others with us, and you'll be left in an empty, distopian hell filled with AT&T advertisements and shitty, shitty cable.
Sweeet!
The power that consumers have is immense. I just wish we could change other markets with this type of outcry.
Actually, it does mark the end of the trials in other markets. Time Warner Cable and Senator Schumer just announced that they have dropped their plans to cap bandwidth.
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Time-Warner-Backs-Off-Metered-Billing-101948?nocomment=1
http://schumer.senate.gov/new_website/record.cfm?id=311573
http://a.longreply.com/120178
And there would be those sources. Good times :-D
I just fired off a nastygram to TWCNYC the other day so I'm just gonna pretend it was my letter that made them change their mind. Lol.
I wonder who the genius was who thought that people would agree with this
YESS!! What a shout out! (I live in Rochester), and this is so great omg this just made my day!
if they do this i will cut all of the cable lines in my town
Can I help? .. LOL... Maybe not... I don't want a $250,000 bounty on my head
My TDS DSL really sucks. But at least it isn't capped.
Last week, I jumped on a bunch of petitions to make sure it was voiced that they would be losing customers if this spread throughout the country.
Especially after the evidence in multiple publications including Wired Magazine that it was pretty much an unjustifiable farce; it would prove to be a very foolish move on their part.
So TWC is putting this on the "shelve" for now. According to DSL Reports
"According to the statement, Time Warner Cable will still be doling out usage meters to all customers. It's pretty clear from the language used that their effort to dramatically reshape broadband billing is far from over, and when it resurfaces, it will be with a better public relations campaign and a lot of selective data. However, what's also pretty clear that the Internet gives consumers the collective power to shape company policy for the better."
Yeah other markets are doing this, comcast for example, though the cap is 250GB. I blow through this in about a week. Hell i am the kind of person who wishes they made a 10TB drive without RAID.
Jesus, what the hell do you download that much?
Pr0n.
It's simple. If they DO put this billing scheme into motion, I and millions of other subscribers will move to other services.
I'm still against the caps, but having Chuck Schumer on my side makes me think I should reconsider...
Heh, I was just thinking I'm glad Chuck is on my side with this. I don't think it's a particularly controversial stance, after all, but most politicians say nothing about it, so this is a little better.
please FiOS come here soon...
Unless they can remove all ads and pop up from showing while I surf the web. Capping can work. But until they do that, I doubt it will work. I do like my internet unlimited. I can watch endless utube cnn hulu..
you still see ads? noob.
Bull. They're just going to lay low until the general public forgets and then sneak it in later this year.
I'm switching to FiOS or another company that won't cap me.
"the customer education process continues"
I, for one, am very very sadden by the fact that they decided to stop this plan. Seriously, it would have been great. The company would of went bankrupt after everyone was "educated" into switching to Verizon.
Nice one...I like it A LOT!
Even without caps, just the idea of them "educating" me drives me mad. But, is any other any better?
Depends where you live I suppose. For NC...no not really that I've seen :-(
"customer education"? Wtf are they gonna do? Start having commercials with a spinning spiral saying in a soothing voice "Bandwidth caps are good for you. Bandwidth caps save starving children"?
Haha we won! Holy crap I was not expecting it to be this easy, but it turned out the way it should have. I live in Rochester, and tomorrow there was supposed to be a public demonstration at the Time Warner building on Mt.Hope Avenue. I wonder if today's announcement has anything to do with that.
These guys are idiots, wait till FiOS is more widely available, they'll regret crap like this.
If Verizon can get approval to put FiOS in Philadelphia, PA the capital of Comcast country it can happen anywhere!!!
If you are in the Triad area, please consider attending a peaceful public protest against unwarranted usage caps this Saturday. The event runs at the same time the Rochester protest will take place.
Date: Saturday, April 18, 2009
Time: 11:00am - 5:00pm
Location: Time Warner Cable
Street: 1813 Spring Garden St
City/Town: Greensboro, NC
http://www.news-record.com/content/2009/04/15/article/time_warner_cable_protest_planned_for_saturday
It's a little late now.
WTF this is the technology age, in japan they are pushing 1gig lines to homes and apt and in the states they wanna limit us, limit the amount of money ur paying ur executives and and put that into building a infrastructure that can handle to growing demand for internet usage. ahhhh i foresee Time Warner making the one of the biggest mistakes of their lives by limiting a rapidly growing industry with so many competition.
This won't be the last time that they try this unless legislation is passed. Just imagine if they get other companies to implement caps as well.
This whole disaster could be avoided, but they are too idiotic and greedy to make it work.
All the ISPs including Time Warner suggest that they need to crack down on the small amount "abusers" that use unprecedented amounts of bandwidth. Fine, I don't think many people disagree with them. However, if that were really the truth and this cap experiment wasn't about sucking more profit out of their average users, then they would have set a decent cap of say 150-300 GB a month, and then had the cap progressively increase and and then removed altogether at the highest/fastest subscription. I would pay $99 a month for uncapped (or capped at 1000GB or something) 30-50 mbps service. Right now, I have time warner 10mbps (the fastest they offer in my area) and pay about $50 a month.
Unfortunately, based on their ridiculous capping suggestions (wasn't it like 10GB a month or something for the mid-tier), they obviously are only interested in blocking regular access to online TV streaming from the likes of HULU and online video rental as these services directly compete with their TV subscription and video on demand revenue. This is ANTI-COMPETITIVE, particularly since in the United States most people have a single, monopolistic cable provider (Since the republicans revoked the line sharing mandate) and so customers have no choice to go to an alternative provider to avoid the caps. This point is important to remember -- it is NOT just about increasing their average revenue per customer.. it is about illegal manipulation of the market through anti-competitive practices.
I live in Rochester, and had looked at this new pricing as more of a positioning move than anything else, where they were attempting to put themselves right into the money stream as entertainment moves more and more online. My biggest beef was that their caps were waaaayy to low. 5 GB is crap for a bottom tier and they know it. Had they launched with something like 50 GB's than public perception would have been significantly different. By going so low they pretty much confirmed how unbelievably greedy they are to an already pissed off customer base. My predictions for TW in th enext year are :
... they will introduce a mandatory internet useage monitoring software package. It will be pitched as a user-convenience thing, but it will look and act just like what it is : spyware. Expect a ridiculous barage of on-screen nagging.
... they will start to sell that data from their spyware to advertisers and whoever the current Internet Police happens to be ( homeland security, the RIAA, whatever overachieving yet completely clueless Senator or Congressman wants it, and so on. ) at that time. Data is money, and TW loves money.
... look for the eventual "safety" features that will not only monitor, but actively cut you off from sites that are bold enough to break the ridiculously onerous and shortsighted Millenium Digital Copyright Act.
Fuck you, Time Warner. You're the one getting educated.
I'm stuck with TimeWarner Cable in NYC. No Verizon FiOS where I live. I hope TW chokes to death on its capping policy. I've hardly any uploading speed. A crappy 65 KB/s. Most of the time I don't even use full download speeds. I don't need it. Download speeds are good when using a premium newsserver but a hindrance when using ratioed BT sites. I'd rather TW throttle my download speed by 25% and double my upload speed. I intend to cut way back on downloading movies anyway. It's time-consuming to have to keep backing up movies to DVD.
Anyway, screw TimeWarner Cable. Their HD station quality ain't all that good either. Technology is supposed to advance usage, not set it back into the stone age. I jettisoned all of my premium movie stations (HBO, Cinemax, etc.) but kept my DVR service. With my internet connection I pay $140 a month. I barely watch TV anymore, but I do record a few shows a week on the DVR.