NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Time Warner on up-sells and competition (in their own words)
----- Forwarded message from David Farber <dave@farber.net> ----- Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 13:53:12 -0400 From: David Farber <dave@farber.net> Subject: [IP] Re: How Much Time Warner's Broadband Caps Will Screw You - Broadband caps Reply-To: dave@farber.net To: ip <ip@v2.listbox.com> Begin forwarded message: From: Debi Jones <debi.jones@gmail.com> Date: April 10, 2009 12:47:36 PM EDT To: dave@farber.net Subject: Re: [IP] How Much Time Warner's Broadband Caps Will Screw You - Broadband caps Reply-To: mojo@mobilejones.com The money quote comes from Time Warner's SEC filing as highlighted in this article and reveals the anti-competitive issue for consumers and video producers. http://www.obsessable.com/news/2009/04/10/time-warner-makes-broadband-cap-concessions-unlimited-plan-for-150-month/ One position from Time Warner's COO, Moreover it's clear that Time Warner fully expects its customers to keep climbing that bandwidth ladder over time, ratcheting themselves into sweeter and sweeter profit positions thanks to the tiered strategy plus known usage increases, thanks to a money quote (literally) from Hobbs: "Broadband data is such a great product. I think there will be some customers who don’t use much that will select the lower tier. But over time, they will use more and move up to the higher price plans." This too reveals that metered broadband isn't really about saving the internet or ensuring great customer experience for the more "polite," less bandwidth-hungry users on the network — it's about setting up a tiered scheme in which Time Warner stands to make an incredible amount of bank as general demand for internet usage is increasing. And now the anti-competitive "money quote" from TW: Thanks also to TW's SEC filing we know it's additionally about thwarting the increasing competition their cable video business faces from competitors delivering video content over the web: "TWC faces competition from a range of other competitors, including, increasingly, companies that deliver content to consumers over the Internet, often without charging a fee for access to the content. This trend could negatively impact customer demand for TWC’s video services, especially premium and On-Demand services." Time Warner's data caps could cost us much more than high monthly fees, if the company has it way. On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 10:08 AM, David Farber <dave@farber.net> wrote: http://i.gizmodo.com/5206697/how-much-time-warners-broadband-caps-will-screw-you Like the virus in 28 Days Later, Time Warner's internet-strangling broadband caps is spreading all over the country. They've got brand new pricing plans too and they yep, they suck. Let's look. The old cap scheme was pretty limited, only going up to a max of 40GB. Now they've got a whole Skittles bag of caps. Here's how Time Warner Cable's COO Landel Hobbs breaks it down, all while breaking out the familiar warning that the internet is about to die if you don't limit your porn consumption to two times a day—MAX: Internet demand is rising at a rate that could outpace capacity within a few years. According to industry analysts, the infrastructure may not be able to accommodate the explosion of online content by 2012. This could result in Internet brownouts. • 1GB with 768kbps downstream for $15/month with $2/GB overcharges • 10, 20, 40 and 60GB will go with Roadrunner Lite, Basic, Standard and Turbo packages, respectively, and maintain the same pricing. Overage is $1/GB. • 100GB will be the new Road Runner...Turbo (I'm not sure why there are two Turbo packages) which is 10Mbps downstream and 1Mbps upstream for $75/month. This is still an order of magnitude more restrictive than AT&T and Comcast, who have caps of 150GB and 250GB, respectively. • A 50Mbps/5Mbps down/up speed tier is coming for $100/month wh snip Archives ------------------------------------------- Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com ----- End forwarded message -----