Surprise! The American Cable Association favors tiered broadband pricing
By Joshua Topolsky 
posted April 28th 2009 5:25PM
posted April 28th 2009 5:25PM
Guess what everybody? Time Warner Cable isn't the only one who thinks tiered broadband is the future -- so does the American Cable Association (ACA). The group claims that a stepped set of packages is the only way in which the high-speed industry can survive the coming hellstorm of your online TV viewing and rampant MP3 downloads. According to ACA president Matt Polka, "the outcome is certain," that metered pricing is on the way -- even if there aren't standardized plans in place yet. The ACA's ex officio chair Patrick Knorr adds that current billing models are "not a sustainable business model," and that "a la carte for the net is consumption-based billing."Though some of the arguments are compelling, the ACA also dramatically suggest that grandmothers shouldn't subsidize those with HD downloading habits, and can't seem to get a fix on just how they want to meter users or what kind of overages should be charged -- both of which seem to be common points of debate. While we're not sold that there's only this single option for pricing broadband (one which heavily favors the provider's bottom lines), the group does bring a tiny bit of thoughtfulness to the discussion, with a member noting that Time Warner Cable's approach hadn't made a very good case for the practice. We suggest a page from Cablevision's playbook, guys.
Sadly, if the cable co's implemented ala carte billing for programming, the bill wouldn't likely be much less than what we pay now. The cost per channel would be higher because it's distributed over x thousand customers instead of y million customers.
I like the idea of what that town in the Carolina's did by essentially becoming it's own internet and cable provider...doing so at a far more competive price than the cable co's would offer (not that they COULDN'T).
To me consumption based billing is like taking a step back a decade or more. I remember the internet service providers had caps and billed some amount once exceeded. With the advance of technology and the broad implementation of fiber around the country I don't see how the cable co's can rationalize it. Unless of course they WANT to drive their customers into the open arms of the fios providers, or other solutions.
Soon they are going to do the same to TV. To me the bandwidth is the same as TV you get from cable. But they will do what the can to make their pockets bigger. They see an opportunity because more people are starting to use the internet for different things are they want their share. Greed bastards.
Seems to me that if it's bad for "grandmothers to subsidize heavy downloaders", then it is equally bad for me to have to subsidize ESPN watchers, or any of the other channels that I have no use for.
They can't have it both ways.
Does tiered billing for cable companies also apply to television viewing?
I thought not...
When a corporation starts whining that "it isn't fair", it's about to take you for a ride.
Tiered billing would be fine if they kept the price reasonable. Like unlimited for $50 a month, and significantly less for the rest. They seem to be trying to do the opposite, charging a lot for the base speed/cap and way more for higher speeds and download amounts.
Faux News. MSNBC doesn't even compare to the travesty that is Faux News.
That was in reponse to TeamSAM above. Second time this has happened :)
The cable companies are just as evil and greedy as the bastards behind the Wall Street and mortgage failures. It's not about providing service, adding channels, or network upgrades....those are paid for by the double digit increases in our regular bills. Usage based billing is about one thing, greed. It's an attempt to squeeze every possible dime they can possibly manage out of their consumer...which is largely a captive audience.
Pure simple greed.
The problem with the tiered billing is, people will have no way to determine how much they are using at the time they are using it. Sites don't tell you how big they are before you click them, or youtube videos don't say how much they are either before you click that start button. And it's not like the regular utilities like electricity or water, where you know if you use certain appliances, your bill will be approximately $X that month. With this you would have no idea until you went and checked with their usage tool as to what has already happened (which could be a very big surprise).
If tiered billing went into place, the whole internet would have to be changed. Every link that you click or video with a start button would have to list the bandwidth required before you click. Also the mail providers would probably have to provide you with a daily number of how much bandwidth would be required to get your email. I have my doubts that even the cable companies can make that happen.
Ah,
The American way... nickle & dime, rape, greed...
Is it just me or is this an exceptionally BAD time to start potentially raising the cost on things? Hey, douchebags over at ACA and TWC, do you recognize that this type of thing will only contribute to the vicious cycle that destroyed the world economy? Look at all the other major corporations that keep RAISING prices and the cost of things... Bailouts and world wide humility ring a bell to you jackasses? Huge companies going out of business and CEO's taking bailouts? Oh, I guess that is in a parallel universe, and not this one.
Anyone up for starting their own god damn country? It's amazing how frustrated people are getting, so who knows, maybe that shit will really happen and it won't just be a dumb joke on behalf of a jackass like myself.
Cheers...
Tiers, my ass.
Tell me why I paid TWC $50/mo for 7mbps for a couple months, just downgraded to 1.5 mbps and don't notice ANY DIFFERENCE in download speeds?
Because most web servers limit how fast you can download a web page.
Contributing to the problem are the multiple usages of the term "tiered broadband". Even the blurb above uses the phase in two different ways.
Across the pond we're used to this (as most of us have DSL rather than cable connections, and historically we never had to subsidise people who used the telephone a lot ).
I pay $20/month for an 8Mb connection with a cap at 3Gb.
I could pay $30/month for an uncapped 20Mb connection
or $15 a month for a 2Mb connection with a cap about the same.
of free with bundled called packages and lousy service (granny likes it).
If I went cable there's a whole bunch of other options and higher speeds but I don't need them. Competition works.
The model developed here partly because of the volume of transatlantic traffic and the fact that undersea cables have a definite cost. But the truth is the market works (although anti-trust rules on the telcos so there's real competition was important).
We also don't care very much about net neutrality - I'd rather not pay for the infrastructure for torrents at peak times personally. You want it - you pay for it.
But hey, we're a bunch of socialists. What do we know about the free market.
Quit your winging and look at the prices we have to pay for broadband in Australia! You complain about possibly being capped at 100GB, 200GB, 300GB, yet in Australia, most plans are around 30GB for around the same price...
Most places in the major cities get around 6Mbps to 14Mbps DSL, and have to pay AU$30 line rental (no calls or anything included for that price) and around AU$60 for a decent ADSL2+ plan with 30GB of download quota included (which is split between peak and off-peak times as well!) I.e. we have to pay AU$90 for a measly 10GB of download during the day, and 20GB during the night...
Now who has something to bitch about?
Bandwidth is the speed of your connection, not your downloads.
You have a old, slow conmputer. To replace it would cost $US 200. However you want the fastest. It's going to cost you around $US 2000. The same applys to networking equipment. If you are going to replace slow internet equipment with fast internet equipment, then you pay for it.
It may not be too expensive to replace the networking gear. However imagine you run a data center and average speed of the internet increases from 8Mb/s to 100Mb/s. That is 12.5 times as fast. If you want your data center to keep competitive, you'll need to make your data centre 12.5 times faster. That may mean having another 11.5 web servers running for every 1 web server you already have. This would increase costs for the data centre by 1250%, excluding buying the hardware. This is why American internet prices need to go up, or become tiered.
Tiered internet dosen't mean you can't download movies or youtube videos. Tiered internet only means that the internet service provider wishes to share your connection with your neighbour, when your not using it, so they can charge both of you less.
On an 8Mb/s connection, many heavy users download 250+ gigabytes of data a month. This means 80 people could share the cost of this connection. However most users use less than 30 gigabytes. At this tier level, 660 different users could share the cost of a connection. That is why they want to tier your internet service.
So a-la-carte is preferred pricing for cable internet, but not for cable tv?
Offer Cable channels ala cart so I don't have to pay for lifetime or the outdoor channel or whatever the 20 or so channels i click through to get what i want to watch, in fact also i don't want to pay for the SD versions of channels I already have in HD cause I don't watch them anymore, so get those off. All and all I only watch about 10 channels max so I shouldn't be paying for others to watch the other 110 or so that i have and don't use
"a la carte for the net" but NEVER for TV channels. Grandmothers subsidizing us? How about all of us subsidizing all the crap channels virtually nobody watches. They want their cake and eat it too I guess. I watch maybe 10 - 15 different channels but have 100's that I pay out-the-ass for - all because I have to subscribe to the premium package to get what I want. I am beside myself pissed. I might just cut all my shit off, go live in the woods, and start some whacko anti-cable cult.
I agree with mostly everyone else but I do see a silver lining if it does happen, for me at least. The only good thing I see coming out of this is that it will help prevent the transition to digital distribution which I despise. I want to own physical media. I like to be able to keep it for as long as I want and use it as I want. Or sell it if I want to. This will shun millions from adopting DD because if they only have 10GB to use every month do you think they are going to download many 5GB HD movie files? There is a reason why I don't have cable and I have Dish Network. Because their pricing sucks! And by doing this their pricing for broadband will suck too and they will continue to loose customers like they are doing now to DTV and Dish.
Imagine a day when there is virtually infinite bandwidth and, therefore, no market distinction. Can you blame them for wanting legalized market manipulation.
What about all the unsecured wireless networks that are out there that have neighbors on them? Imagine if your non-tech-savvy relative (grandparents) having a $200+ bill because they live in an apartment and don't have their network secure.
Yes I know you can bring up the arguement that it is their fault for not securing their network but not everyone is up on all this technology.
What about people breaking into wireless networks to commit large downloads so that they don't run up their bill? Gee I need to download a 4 gig file, lets go for a war drive...brb
These broadband providers are just pigs at the trough. Marginal broadband costs at their wholesale rates (especially the larger providers) is trivial... 5 cents / GB at most. Whey then do they insist on turning around and charging $1 - $2 overage charges on ridiculously low caps in the first place??? At most they should have reasonable (like 250 GB caps) then charge a MAXIMUM of 25 cents/GB overage. Anything much less is unacceptable and I refuse to support any company that implements such caps, especially if they implement them in an unreasonable way. If it comes down to it, I'll just gut internet to the bone and use it only for banking and such, and cut the TV and everything else I can off and just use Over The Air, Netflix, flash drives, etc.
We all need to dig our heels in about this nonsense. Call and write our legislators, and get some laws passed to regulate this oligopoly who has become a little too comfortable in their uncompetitive status. They are all making very nice profits, equipment upgrades are quite cheap... there's just no excuse. And I'll do my best to resist and not support any companies that try to go down this path.
Rank Bullsh*t.
Here's the real issue: the cable companies want to keep you locked into their proprietary world. They want to control how much "video-on-demand" you get and take a fat cut of every overpriced video you stream. They don't make a dime of extra revenue when you stream a TV show over Hulu or watch a Netflix movie instantly. They want to cut those services off at the knee-caps by imposing artifical bandwidth limits that make them effectively unaffordable or, barring that, squeeze every dime of revenue out of their customers for the privilege.
If bandwidth is so expensive, why am I getting 500 channels beamed to me 24hrs a day, 7 days a week? Where is my a-la-carte option to drop the 25 home shopping channels I get now and dedicate that supposedly scarce bandwidth to Hulu? Give me a freakin' break. Do they really think we are that dumb?
"If bandwidth is so expensive, why am I getting 500 channels beamed to me 24hrs a day, 7 days a week?"
Because it's not coming over the Internet. Seriously, are you so dense as to think that your cable operator gets their TV content over the public Internet?
Fuck, is it that hard to wrap you brain around the fact that your ISP is a RESELLER of bandwidth and they PAY PER BYTE for the bandwidth? In the real world of the net pipe business it is pay per byte.
Go get a leased line dedicated 24/7 to your house from a real provider and then you'll know the real cost of access.
Consumer broadband is priced assuming every user will not use their pipe 24/7. When users start doing that the cost for those users should go up. Why should some email/web surfer subsidize your torrent habit?
Achievement Unlocked: Ignorance of Broadband Business Models.
If the ACA (cable companies) want a la carte pricing for internet access they also need to give us a la carte cable TV.
IE I want to be able to pay for only the channels that I watch.
I don't want to have to subsidize Spanish, sports, BET or other channels I don't watch!