No, TWC it's not all better. We're switching to something new very soon, probably Dish Network. Thanks for picking my area which has such limited alternatives, though!

I've already dropped my time warner TV cable services. I now plan to drop my internet service with them next week.

I am now going to be convincing my friends to use OTA for their television needs and switching to Frontier DSL (which now has no caps in response to Time Warner Cable's plans).

Let the hemorrhaging of Time Warner Cable's profits begin!

Don't hide behind doing it for the customer. If that were the case you'd be upgrading your network rather than trying to keep people off it.

No, not really. I'm still leaving before the cap is in place.

I pay less than half that in monthly fees for my service for unlimited service. I think their overage fees should be less than what I pay right now

That said, I will find a competitor to get my internet from if they implement caps in Kansas City. Time Warner installed fiber to a ton of neighborhoods so I can't imagine they're that hurting for bandwidth.

The moment TWC launches this in San Diego is the moment I cancel them and switch to FiOS, which just finally became available for our area!

The only thing they're doing right by the consumer here is the 2-3 months of grace.

However they still havent mentioned a monitor program, like other ISPs have - I want to be able to login and see my data in real time.

Without knowing how much internet I actually use (I'm going to take a shot at between 20gb per month.. but really I just dont know) I can't say for sure how I feel about this.

What I do know is the Charleston SC Tri-County is a competitive market, so I'm not too panicked just yet.

Can I file a complaint for this to the state AG, by any chance?

@SanDiegoDude: You have FiOS in San Diego? I thought San Diego was AT&T territory, not Verizon. Also, why the hell are you sticking around with TWC (no matter if they have caps or not) when FiOS is available? ;-)

The 1gb plan is simply a slap in the face compared to the larger insult. 1gb should be complimentary for the damn basic package. Just send them a refurb modem and be done with it.

@SanDiegoDude: I think you mean AT&T U-verse.

ok really? 60GB? are you joshing me!? and $150 a month for virtually unlimited service? oh screw you TWC, i don't have the kind of money, you know why? because WE'RE IN A RECESSION DUMBIES!! very few people in Rochester have that kind of money, and there's no other options in the area.

I pay CDN$45 a month for a 10/1 GB with a 100 Gb cap that is never enforced. I thought this to be pretty standard. I don't think I would pay $75 for the same service especially knowing the price could go much higher with overage charges.

This is 100% about protecting their cable tv and on-demand services. They basically figure that if you get your tv/movies from someone else, you still need to pay them for it. It's basically no different than throttling competing services, but by marketing it as a fee based service they hope to sneak around regulators and hope that their "capitalist" approach will gain them "conservative" political support.

One gigabyte costs less than one cent. If you used 1tb of data that at most is going to cost the ISP 10 dollars. Current pricing already is setup to adjust for bandwidth hogs. Time Warner has their turbo add-on which basically doubles the download speed of their base service for 10-15 bucks. Since most hogs would pay that fee for the added speed, they are already being paid by and profiting more on "hogs".

Most of the cost for broadband is a fixed network cost, not bandwidth. They want to charge 75 dollars more as an extra fee that at the most extreme could only really cost 10 bucks. An average hog probably only uses 100-300gb a month. So 1-3 dollars more in bandwidth than the old lady checking email to them justifies charging people 75 dollars more.

LOL I like the DIE DIE DIE! 75 bucks MORE for internet is still Highway robbery, no matter how you look at it. If this cap ever comes to my city i'm going back to carrier pigeon. Or bartering with my neighbor for their wireless password.

@Overheal: Agreed. Big Kudos for the grace period idea. Here's hoping that's a permanent feature for both new and existing customers, and not just a limited time thing for the transition.

That means that for $150 per month customers could have virtually unlimited usage at Turbo speeds.

can someone explain what "virtually unlimited" means? i mean, when you're dealing with a capping policy, there's unlimited & limited. where exactly does virtually unlimited fall?

i'm guessing it means that once you reach your 100GB cap, they'll will let you pay $1/GB for up to an additional 75GB. after that, you're done. the lights stop blinking until next month.

Sounds like the fuel surcharges that various companies added when gas was $4.00/gallon. Even if TWC has a legitimate reason for capping, will the caps and surcharges go away when the technology catches up to accommodate the increased usage?

There isnt much of a legitimate reason for doing this. Its a plain money grab. Most of their network is habitually underutilized. They're basically increasing fees because people dont use their connection enough.

@Alys Brangwin feels g-l-a-m-o-u-r-o-u-s: imo, this is the perfect time to lobby your legislators to break cable franchise agreements, or de-franchise TWC. the fact that other cable internet service providers don't cap usage should serve as sufficient proof that TWC is abusing their franchise.

It makes you wonder why the 30% of their customers who only use 1g or less don't blance the 30% of customers who use more than 40g.

TW rest assured we know this is another way to screw your customers because they have very few options in the markets you service. We know this has NOTHING to do with P2P or Bittorrent, instead it's about you gaining capital without improving your systems.

And finally TW, rest assured, if you announce caps in my market... I am switching carriers, next day.

@Kevin Carlyle: Also in Kansas City. I pay 75 a month for analog cable and road runner internet with turbo. It's based on a contract. I already know I will be canceling the service if they don't let me renew the contract price. I am one person in a single apartment. 75 for both is the top of reasonable. But anything more and it would be too much.

I just hope my only alternative isn't earthlink reselling TWC.

@SanDiegoDude: I ordered FiOS the day it became available in my neighborhood and dumped TWC about an hour after FiOS was installed.

Every broadband provider in my city switched to metered broadband within the same week, and they all offer practically same rates. It's $50 per month for 2 Mbps/350 Kbps with a 30 GB cap, give or take a little speed depending on the provider.

I'd like to switch, but it would be useless unless I also move out of the area, which I have no plans to do.

I will split if they ever try and pull this on me, even if it means switching to a slower, uncapped network. This is just absurd.

@bilge: Do they ever?

As I saw someone over on Twitter say (or something like it), Gee I get to pay $150 for unlimited service, when I pay $39.99 for unlimited now. What a deal!!!!"

I can't find it now, but some people are saying that their business class is cheaper. Somewhere between $80-90/mo for unlimited...

Sounds like buying the $150 per month plan and wifi-ing to the neighborhood in exchange for $$ is the way to go... I have to share with 3 neighbors to bring my costs down to the $40 again, and "virtually" unlimited bandwidth - whatever that means.

@YourTechSupport: That one gig plan was created yesterday. It was created to try to address the huge backlash when they announced their new pricing last week. Since one of the dumb arguments was that old people checking email would have to pay 40 dollars.
Of course that argument was a dumb one dreamed up by people trying to oppose this in any way. Since anyone who only checks email would be using 7 dollar dial-up and would not be using more expensive broadband.

TWC pretty much created this tier to address that argument knowing full well that no one would ever pay to use it beyond dial-up users that are not already paying customers. So time warner wins even more and the rest of us are even more screwed.

So TWC is going to implement DOCSIS 3.0 in Rochester? There is no way in hell I'd pay $99 for a 50/5 connection when it's going to be capped, and FIOS is close to that speed and unlimited. Granted FIOS isn't available there yet, but it's only a matter of time.

We're a couple hours west of Rochester - if they pull this metered shit here I'm cancelling Time Warner, both cable and broadband. The wife will have to live without the DVR.

If this happens in my area my parents will go berserk at the increase of costs.

I guarantee that I use at least 200 GB per month. >_>

I'm not sure if this is possible with this new tier service, but a couple years ago I finally was fed up with twc shenanigans so I looked around and found that earthlink offers cable internet service in my area (I'm about 80 miles south east of Rochester btw) I believe earthlink pays TWC to use there cable lines. This may be a good way to get around TWC "bandwidth issues" anyone know for sure?

@Alys Brangwin feels g-l-a-m-o-u-r-o-u-s: That's what makes this whole thing so evil! They're deliberately trying this in markets that have no alternatives- either you pony up or you go without. I'd be shocked to see TWC try this in areas where AT&T and Verizon are viable alternatives.

@bilge: HAHAHAHAHA! Please see: Any American airline.

@Micromegas: What area do you live in?

So I guess you all thing it's A-OK for 1% of the people to be subsidized by everyone else who doesn't leave torrents running 24/7?

I'm all for anything that gets people to pay for what they actually use.

@bilge: The technology has already been caught up. Broadband has always been unlimited since the 90s when it came out. This is because bandwidth is extremely cheap compared to the physical costs of managing the network. So the majority of the cost is a fixed cost and that is why you get fixed pricing with broadband.

Today bandwidth is much cheaper than it was in the 90s. The difference in cost between a person only checking email and a person downloading 300gbs of files is less than 3 dollars.

Just look at their ploy. After 75 dollars of metered billing your line becomes unlimited again. If this was about protecting their networks from hogs, they wouldn't allow you to just pay more and still get unlimited downloads.

@Kevin Carlyle: @Corporate_guy:

Also in KC, and I think I have the same plan as you. Since I'm locked into a 12 month contract I'm expecting mine not to change.

If they try to change it for my contract I will be breaking the contract(via material change of your contract argument).

Since I live in Greensboro, my friends and I are all outraged by the "test market." We are currently looking into our other options and trying to get people as informed as possible about the bait and switch tactics of TW.

Nice. So under their plan, it would take over a year to download the Age of Conan 14 day free trial from Fileplanet.

"download 1gb, pause the downloader(wait a month), repeat for 13 months"

@Micromegas: Bingo.

Don't think "well I'll just switch to Verizon" is gonna help you escape this sort of thing. I'm sure the only reason TWC hasn't tried this in viable-Verizon markets is because Verizon hasn't yet promised that they'd do it too.

But don't worry. I'm sure as soon as those "top 30%" bandwidth users from TWC switch over to FIOS, they'll announce their own metered broadband plans too. There is *no possible way* TWC would ever implement this on a large scale unless they were pretty confident that everyone else would adpot something similar.

Old and busted: Stealing Cable.
New Hotness: Stealing Wifi Internet.@Micromegas: Sounds like price-fixing to me. Maybe you should contact your local attorney general. But all it'll take for this to fall apart is one ISP that still offers flat-rate internet to come to town.

@Berz: My contract runs out at the end of the summer. I believe it was a 14 month contract. That is when I would be in danger of not getting the same deal or being forced onto a metered service. I am not worried about them making a change mid contract.

@equatek: That's bound to violate the terms of service. Besides, it doesn't come out to the same as you had before, since you'll be sharing one 768kb/128kb connection instead of having your own individual connections. Not really a viable option if your neighbors all watch TV and movies online.

So how much does fiber optic cable cost?
I feel like buying my own and running it to my nearest friend who has Uverse.

@snowburnt: Yeah, really. Charging $150/month for how things used to be isn't really kosher.

@mac-phisto: It's supposed to mean you can use all you want after 150 bucks. But your scenario is probably what they are really thinking about. Also this is 75 dollars more than what you normally pay. So there is nothing stopping them from creating a 150 dollar tier thus allowing them to charge you 225.

@Mad Dog McCree: You must not be very technically savvy, otherwise you could just break their WEP. Its not hard.

@xkaluv: There is one other thing this lets them do. It allows them to offer sweet bundle deals that have 5gb or 40gb caps at 1 dollar a gigabyte so that an advertised sweet bundle will end up costing more than your previous services.