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Time Warner FUCKS UP - outrage across the net
TheSonicRetard
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Time Warner announces Tiered internet service, bandwidth cap
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20080603/tc_nf/60098;_ylt=AvhvnG8CgsRvAQNiLxTPEwKs0NUE
Begin the rabble rabble.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20080603/tc_nf/60098;_ylt=AvhvnG8CgsRvAQNiLxTPEwKs0NUE
The first tier, at $29.95 monthly, will be a relatively slow 768 kilobits per second with a 5GB monthly cap, while a plan at $54.90 per month will offer 15 megabits per second and a 40GB cap.
Both downloads and uploads count toward the monthly total. Overages will be charged at $1 a gigabyte.
Begin the rabble rabble.
TheSonicRetard on
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its the size of the caps, and the enforcement of them (overage charges) that are insane
Hell, that's better than most of the deals in this country.
You're right this is nothing new. It's old. Very old.
1992 old.
...there haven't been quotas on bandwidth in like 15 years.
Let me just go ahead and say that anyone who wants to waltz in here and be a contrarian prick should check their smarmy ass at the door.
The shit net-neutrality advocates have been warning against for years is finally here.
Not yet.
However, comcast has a secret cap.
Unless AOL/Time Warner makes some decent profit from overages fees or people upgrade their plan which would encourage other ISPs to follow their example.
I'm with Bright House. I think that may fall under Time Warner.
EDIT: From Wikipedia
"These systems were all owned by the Time Warner Entertainment - Advance/Newhouse Partnership but, under a deal struck in 2003, Advance/Newhouse took direct management and operational responsibility for portion of the partnership cable systems roughly equal to their equity. Ostensibly, this was due to A/N's dissatisfaction with Time Warner Cable's strategic direction. Time Warner still owns a stake in Bright House Networks even though Advance/Newhouse runs the day to day operation of the company. Bright House networks provides customers in Central Florida, Tampa Bay and Alabama with Digtial Services."
Dag. TimeWarner's bullshit deals looks kind of cool in comparison.
Gamers go to message board to complain, comically hit their usage limits at the same time - outages across the net
Having said that, usage caps are pretty common over here.
It sets a precedent. If they can actually force consumers on to this then it's only a short matter of time before more companies adopt the policy.
Also, as a personal aside, HOLY FUCKING SHIT. I have TimeWarner because it's the fastest service available in the area. I don't live in no backwoods, this is Los Angeles. It's either them or DSL, and fuck that.
FiOS can't come a moment too soon. LA is a fucking huge market, I'm surprised it's not here yet. Actually, it's probably not here because AT&T owns this market and Verizon doesn't even exist besides mobile. Shit.
I have 15/2 service from Time Warner.
You're saying I will only be able to download 40 GB per month?
What? Really?
I could get 40 GB used up in a week. What the hell, Time Warner? Seriously, what the hell? Why bother with these speeds?
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EDIT: Just curious, not starky. I spend all day online but don't really download anything...
Unless "this country" -SPI- is referring to is not America.
That sounds pretty standard for an internet service plan a year or two ago here in New Zealand.
edit: oh, see there we go.
Austin has Time Warner cable, or DSL. AT&T U-verse and FiOS supposedly exist in some mythical part of the city, where unicorns prance.
Dallas/Ft. Worth is Time Warner as well, but they get FiOS to soften the blow.
Houston is stuck with comcast.
I live in Silicon Valley. It's AT&T DSL, Comcast cable, or nothin'.
Also a terribly bad thing for anyone who shares bandwidth with roommates. I have five of them; I'm sure you can imagine how fast we'd go through even 40GB of data. :-/
That's 40 gb a month.
By the by, I can go through 40 gb in a week very easily. I subscribe to Vongo and stream movies to my TV. Each movie is about 2 gb big.
I work in IT and do plenty of work at home so I've got lots of boring data transfers. It doesn't help that I download a new Linux distro almost daily.
By the way, I think I read an article recently that the average internet user (youtube, myspace, etc.) will average 6-8 GB per month. Now imagine you're an enhanced average internet user who uses youtube, myspace, etc. more than a few hours a day...
SC2 NA: exoplasm.519 | PA SC2 Mumble Server | My Website | My Stream
Watching a video on, say, Youtube is considered "downloading"? Even though I'm not actually getting anything saved on my computer?
I suck with the Internet. But yes, this sounds like pure shit, and even shittier if it applies to me (oh God I hope it doesn't), because I'm on the Internet a rough average of 24 hours a week, if not more.
Also, say goodbye to youtube.
Anytime you access any information on the internet, you download.
When you visit these forums, you are downloading stuff.
See that there? You just downloaded a 20 kb image. It's stored in your temporary internet files. This post alone is probably around 22 kb big, in its entirety.
Hold on. This is NOT related to Net Neutrality. Read up on Net Neutrality 101. The tiered Internet that Net Neutrality advocates, including myself, refer to has to do with various tiers of fees for web site owners.
For example, let's say I create a brand new website. Network owners currently charge me at a rate of X dollars for the use of their network. Over time, my website becomes more and more popular. Thanks to net neutrality, the network owner cannot suddenly increase their rates just because I'm more popular. Certainly if I go over my contracted bandwidth limit or cap, that's a different story, but they can't discriminate and make me pay more than they could be charging another website that has similar use. Even worse, without network neutrality, you could have network owners that decide to make me pay more money ... because they've actually started their own website that covers a similar topic, and this is one way to "even the playing field" in their eyes. (With more and more network owners broadening themselves and acquiring media and content companies, this is becoming a potential problem)
Note ... this actually has nothing to do with what consumers pay. Yes, what you're talking about is a type of tiered Internet, but on the consumer-level and not service-level.
Now, that said, I don't actually think this is such a bad thing anymore. Why? Because network companies have already been lying to us all along about "unlimited access". It's actually not unlimited, due to all the unfair bandwidth throttling and other nasty practices going on. Frankly, that's why a lot of people prefer DSL as opposed to cable, because DSL plans tend to be very straightforward in the bandwidth people are paying for.
Would I prefer true unlimited over a bandwidth cap? Of course! But notice I said "true". If the cap turns out to be something much higher than I normally go through anyway and it's completely not filtered or tampered with, and the price I pay for it is equivalent (or hell, lower) than what I pay for my current fake "unlimited" plan ... maybe that's a good thing after all.
Of course, like most people, I'm still hoping that FiOS will come to my neighborhood and I'll never have to deal with Comcast ever again.
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Going to a webpage is considered downloading. Refreshing this thread required downloading. And sending this post requires an upload, which will factor into the 40gb limit.
beat'd
40GB a month is a little more than ten gigs a week. And don't just think about it in terms of what you're "downloading", it's ALL TRAFFIC.
Way to go Time Warner for pushing back progress over a decade. Didn't you assholes get a federal grant to handle this very problem?
Crooks and liars all of them.
20 kb well spent?
I had six flatmates and we had a 10GB cap last year. That pretty much meant no torrents and no Youtube until the end of the month where there would be a small window to go over our cap before our provider throttled us back.
Online Halo, TF2, Call of Duty, etc will all likely see a significant drop in population.
I'm a ruthless but fair administrator. I alone had the password to the router in my fraternity house. I capped everything, it was all tightly managed.
So many times I was tempted to remove my cap, but I never did. It suuuuucked. it was like being on 56k again some days.