AP: Time Warner Cable tries metering Internet use

[desmond]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080602/...cable_internet

1$ per GB over quota (40GB). Downloads are doa.

[SkullPhyre]

Bullshit aol tried that crap years ago and it failed miserably. good thing i have comcast.

[Bobby Henderson]

Scoff if you like. Technology for metering bandwidth has definitely improved over the years and is reliable enough to deliver. Every major ISP is looking to put a meter on every personal Internet connection.

While metered bandwidth could be a big problem for Apple and the ambitions it has for AppleTV (and thus help Blu-ray by shutting up all those movie downloads proponents), metered access is ultimately a pretty bad thing.

Metered access may bring about heavy cost premiums for all sorts of video on demand services customers may already be accessing via their cable TV or satellite TV services. The big telcos could use that as leverage to get more customers to bundle all their telecommunications and entertainment services under one plan and brand -and even there the metering probably wouldn't stop.

I can see metered access quickly bringing an end to free WiFi hot spots all over the country. But it would also force a lot of idiots out there to properly secure their own home WiFi broadcasts from "wardrivers" looking for free Internet signals and bandwidth to poach.

From the "big picture" point of view, American telcos would put American businesses and individual users at an even worse disadvantage compared to other developed countries in terms of Internet bandwidth and Internet quality. The United States is already falling behind other developed and developing countries with regard to Internet sophistication.

I'm holding to my prediction that it will be at least another 7 to 10 years before American see Internet speeds of 30 million bits per second or more become common. Those speeds will be achieved in other countries well before then. The businesses in those countries will have a pretty nice advantage there.

[helius]

Oligopolies such as the cable and telephone companies try very hard to get you to pay more for less rather than actually innovate.

[Clark Kent]

I see metered access to the Internet the future in the U.S. As more bandwidth intensive content moves to the Internet like video the companies will do everything in their power to control costs. Unlimited downloading will be available to people willing to pay a huge premium monthly.

[JTK]

I have TWC with Road Runner. If the implement this and I'm someone who doesn't do a lot of Torrenting and downloading but I maybe do some online gaming and such every so often...could I see my rates actually go down because of something like this?

[Neo65]

Originally Posted by SkullPhyre

Bullshit aol tried that crap years ago and it failed miserably. good thing i have comcast.

The difference here is that the ISPs have noticed that ever since P2P, their backbone is getting to the saturation point where they either spend a lot of money to upgrade the available total bandwidth or throttle the traffic. While they went a log way down throttling the p2p traffic, video is also starting, and video traffic is many times heavier than mp3s.

So the ISPs are doing this not because they want to make more money, but because they can't handle the extra traffic and can't afford to spend more upgrading their infrastructure unless they can raise enough money.

In the last cycle, all that fiber were financed in the internet bubble where the bagholders were eventually severely burned while each company went out of business. I doubt anyone can raise the billions needed this time through a business case built around laying more fiber for internet. People have not forgotten what happened the last time.

The 40GB limit is outrageously low. In eastern Canada, the highest cap for cablemodem is 90GB with the highest premium service, and that is already too low, I exceeded that every other month and my family don't even download video other than watching youtube. Right now, I am getting only warnings, and the billing has not started yet.

PS3 also allows you to download these GBs worth of content and trailers. Don't overdo that as GBs will fly by quickly if you're not careful, and the trailers aren't really that interesting.

[ThePhantomOak]

Originally Posted by SkullPhyre

good thing i have comcast.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, Comcast is leading the charge with Time Warner.

There will never be Movie DLC replacing DVD or Blu until we get fiberoptic cable between all the major population centers (there are way to many people living in suburbs to let this happen). Chances are the internet has reached its top end until they invest huge amounts of tax dollars (like they did to get electircal then phone to every home).

[dialog_gvf]

Originally Posted by desmond

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080602/...cable_internet

1$ per GB over quota (40GB). Downloads are doa.

Or five magic words: A piece of the action.

It wouldn't be logical to expect the content suppliers to have all the revenue with the ISPs burdening all the costs.

Gary

[Anthony P]

I have TWC with Road Runner. If the implement this and I'm someone who doesn't do a lot of Torrenting and downloading but I maybe do some online gaming and such every so often...could I see my rates actually go down because of something like this?

probably not, these schemes are to get the user to pay for the necessary upgrades, many telcos do it. The issue is that some "abusers" use too much BW and so they bottleneck what the telcos can offer (i.e. your internet is slower because your neighbour dl every movie out there). So the fee has one of two results, either the person stops/slows down (so now your internet is faster) or the guy pays and then the telco has the $ to upgrade the link. The problem is right now usage is way to high to what can be reasonably offered and is why telcos have these fees.

[mikesoba]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

probably not, these schemes are to get the user to pay for the necessary upgrades, many telcos do it. The issue is that some "abusers" use too much BW and so they bottleneck what the telcos can offer (i.e. your internet is slower because your neighbour dl every movie out there). So the fee has one of two results, either the person stops/slows down (so now your internet is faster) or the guy pays and then the telco has the $ to upgrade the link. The problem is right now usage is way to high to what can be reasonably offered and is why telcos have these fees.

Nonsense. It is more income for these monopolies. Already, the monthly charge is excessive (no credible competition) and for the US, it is costlier than in many European countries. I pay nearly $60 per month with Cox -- outrageous.

[dakota81]

Originally Posted by mikesoba

Nonsense. It is more income for these monopolies. Already, the monthly charge is excessive (no credible competition) and for the US, it is costlier than in many European countries. I pay nearly $60 per month with Cox -- outrageous.

Stick it to the man! Switch over to Netzero dialup!

[doctorsteve]

You need to remember that this is happening in TX in areas that have limited cable access (with TV reception either over-the-air or satellite) and so internet users sucking up bandwidth is a big problem.

Do not expect this to become the norm everywhere.

[supersix4]

lol guess the big supporters of internet downloads isnt reading this

[tron3]

I feel bandwidth is intangible. It can be measured, but should not be metered. Alot of that crosstalk is just the computer talking to the network. Much of it may also be tracking cookies talking to their creators. Why should I pay for it?

Ok, so maybe you d/l a LOT of stuff every month, but did the service provider give you the full bandwidth for which you paid? Probably not. I bet prime time slowed you down too. So how dare they charge you more for trying to use what is yours?

There is a video on youtube which I hope is total bs. It says that the Internet as we know it will end in 2012. All the major providers will have metered content. As long as you browse within their spectrum of content, you are fine. If you browse outside of that content, you get charged extra. Supposedly this will be on a global scale to regain control of the Internet.

That means AOL users would probably never get to this site without paying extra. In essence, most people will probably opt NOT to pay the ridicules fees for browsing outside their controlled intranet.

Think how this effects great sites like this one when traffic screeches to a halt. It will be like a taking a drive on Superball Sunday during the game.

How about e-commerce? Many business thrive off the free web system. Will the ISP shake down those businesses as well? "Pay us to be included in our content, or end up in the cyber abyss." I won't even look for the video and show you because it will spread panic.

In the case of the Internet the inmates run the assylum, and that is how we like it.

[dk3dknight]

Ah so the internet is moving towards socialist communism... great.



Oh well perhaps this will force some great uprising... the hackers vs corporation, with communities distributing rifles to fight the great internet corporation...

Course its so simple, time warner will take over the goverment...



Perhaps even events similar to half life 2 will occur, or the events of devastation.

*starts to build post apocalyptic shelter*

[tron3]

Originally Posted by dk3dknight

...

*starts to build post apocalyptic shelter*

Make a room for me. I don't want to be the only paranoid skitz left on the outside.

[Jimbo976]

Rogers Cable (the biggest cable company in Canada I believe) is doing metering as well. This kicks in for real this month (they have just been warning up until now). For now at least there is a maximum $25 fee per month for using extra bandwidth.

Service Levels and the monthly bandwidth limits:

Ultra Lite– 2 GB
Lite – 25 GB
Express – 60 GB
Extreme/Extreme Plus - 95 GB

If you exceed your monthly usage allowance, you will be charged as follows:

Ultra Lite – $5.00/GB to a maximum of $25.00
Lite – $2.50/GB to a maximum of $25.00
Express – $2.00/GB to a maximum of $25.00
Extreme – $1.50/GB to a maximum of $25.00
Extreme Plus – $1.25/GB to a maximum of $25.00

[stockstar1138]

i think this is the way most companies are going.

I lived in a dorm 2 years ago and 4 people on my floor, including my roommate downloaded movies and music 24/7. Totally unfair to everybody else on the floor, who wanted halfway decent speed. Took me 15 hours to download GTHD because of it.

People using up this kind of bandwith everymonth are usually doing something they shouldn't be doing, so for the people breaking the law that are going to complain about this I have no sympathy for.

Poor anti-blus who thought downloading terabytes of HD movies every month was the future.

[kuliddar]

Hmm. Interesting. From what I read this is nothing new in Canada.

I'm with Videotron who has different high speed services depending on your usages. I got a basic high speed cable package that downloads up to a 728k/s which is quite decent. I can only download up to 20gb and upload up to 10gb. I pass those quotas then I pay which I can't recall how much since I never did. I usually never go pass 10-12 gb of download and we have two computers sharing the connection.

As mentioned there are other services from the same company that gives the "ultra speed" (whatever that means cause almost 1mb/s is fast imo) and that charge more. However, they dropped the unlimited download last year which caused a fiasco here cause they modified their user agreement with people they had contracts with (google it to know more).

There is a bandwith problem and that's one way to control it. I don't really have a problem with it but think of this:

For those "movie downloads are the future" idiots...can you see the problem now and how it will never be........