Bunch of PR BS. They really don't care that those who "use less should pay less." This is nothing but a money grab and they're unhappy that they have been exposed. Their own financials say that broadband costs are going down while customers are increasing.

So if the people who complain are the "vocal minority" what are we, chopped liver?

Mean while up here in Canada I still have a cap, a mere hundred gigs a month, has really affected how much a torrent.

i'm not against metered bandwidth, but the rates/caps TWC was setting were obnoxiously high.

What do you do if the "vocal minority" are the ones that are already educated?

Something tells me that this is the case.

@Thassodar:

Yeah! They must really hate us.

Holy crap..the little people won

I think what TWC meant was, "We still believe that Road Runner customers who use less should pay slightly more (but no less then what they pay now), and that those who use more should pay out the wazoo."

They really ought to have someone proof their press releases.

It's amazing that these companies want to charge us an ever increasing amount for sevices they are slowly trying to decrease. This holds similar to the net neutrality situation, where big corporations were going to try and limit the websites someone could visit based on funds recieved from certain websites. If they want to offer the service for free then who are we to determine how, when, and how much? Since I am paying for this service, I don't want to be told no.

And this is the result of allowing gigantic Telcos and Telco monopolies in the US.

Decisions like this from your provider should allow a customer to cancel their switch and switch to an alternative preventing monopolistic pricing structures like this.

Free market good. Competition good. Monopolies bad.

I love how Time Warner doesn't mention that they bill BY THE SECOND, as well as by the month now. Customers who use more DO pay more, TWC, that's why you have pricing tiers based on transfer speeds. They hope that we don't look at the whole bill at the same time and see that we're being charged for a specific data transfer rate, as well as the amount transferred total.

blah. blah. blah. if you truly wanted to provide a metered experience, there wouldn't be flat-rate tiers with a certain allotment of bits/mo. instead, you would charge a straight per bit fee.

& if that's what you want to do, go for it. i suggest 6 mos. of "metered bills" (along with the future proposed rate) before you adjust your billing method so that customers can determine how much their bill will change.

i could see metering broadband like other utilities as a good thing, but this isn't like other utilities. this is like cellcos. that charge outrageous overage fees when you go over your allotment, but never give you credits for when you don't use what you paid for.

Without all the B.S., TW's plan to effectively change the price of unlimited internet from 40 bucks a month to 75 bucks a month but ONLY in markets where it has no competition is practically screaming for a visit from the anti-trust division of the justice dept.

If if actuly came down to paying what you use then I'd be all for it, but history has shown that they cannot be trusted. What they say is only as good as your having some government office hold them to it for about 5 minutes. It seems what they want to do is something like the internet was back in the pre internet days with AOL. They want to put walls up, the meter wont run so long as we're looking at things thats in the "time warner approved" areas, also will be refered to as "shit people pay us to give away that no one wants". It then boils down to network neutrality because well things on their network your not paying extra for, and everything else you are.

@kvanh: Agreed. I have metered broadband and love it ($15/mo cable internet!), but TWC's rates were a bit much.

You know they've done the research, and I bet that if they charged a metered rate (as in for electricity) the only fair way they could, which is to take "average" usage and come up with a rate that equals the current monthly fee--

What they'd have is 80 percent of people paying MUCH less- and 20 percent paying so much more they'd seek an alternative- thus killing the golden goose.

So.. seems to me they're better off the way it is-- and they're just getting greedy.

I'm an media professional. If I took on freelance work then I'd have to pay up the wazoo for all my file-transfer use, not to mention the amount of video-streaming I have to do. It'd sure make things a LOT more difficult.

I don't know why this is even considered a good idea. The internet is integral to business and education, not just recreation. If we want to compete aggressively in a global marketplace, we need to make sure that more Americans have affordable, unlimited access the internet. Price-gouging people for "over-usage" of the internet can only hurt.

I truly believe that the purpose of this is to attempt to kill off online video before it cuts too deeply into cable television profits.

Do they think that we can't do a comparison of the price per gigabyte from the old way versus the new way? It's basic math for "F" sake.

Greed, pure and simple. Especially lame while attempting to overcharge for a beleaguered and poorly maintained TW net during a recession. Unconscionable!

We need the cable co. monopolies in certain cities broken down so competition can come in and people can have a choice on which ISP they choose. That would stop stupid crap like this really fast.

@tailstoo: Exactly. Did anybody's bill go down with the adoption of metered access? All I heard about was surcharges for using more than 20,000,000 bytes in a month (which, honestly, isn't very much).

"Anti-metered broadband advocates are rejoicing today as TWC admitted defeat and delayed its plan to expand metered broadband to Rochester, NY."

A delay of a plan is not a victory, just a temporary stay of execution.

"According to TWC's press release, the dust-up was caused by a "vocal minority" of customers and that the problem is that they just haven't educated everyone."

Translated: We thought our bullsh*t explanation was good enough, but obviously we were wrong. The vocal minority will now enter our "re-education" camps where they will be rehabilitated through education and socially constructive labor.

Where was their "those who use less should pay less" attitude when the FCC was toying with a la carte cable channels? This is just a cash grab.

@Thassodar: The Anxious Demographic is a proud member of the Vocal Minority!

@kvanh: While I agree to a certain point, I think charging for speed of connection makes more sense in the long run and is what most other providers already do (including TWC) This really feels like TWC is trying to make people pay a premium for users who want to get their TV online rather than through them (even with their 75 dollar cap sitting right around the same price as having digital cable at home)

If I can get unlimited bandwidth on my cellular telephone through Verizon for 25 dollars a month, why the hell should I pay 75 dollars a month for it through my wired connection?

@SanDiegoDude: duh. replace bandwidth with "data"

TWC says they are planning to relocate the "vocal minority" to a "Reeducation Camp," where there will be no danger of them spreading false information. Or any other kind of information.

Have you people gone insane? This is still Consumerist right? TWC hasn't surreptitiously gained control of the website somehow?

Of course this is a ruse to make more money, and not just from the 'heavy users'. Have you ever known any cable company, including TWC, make changes to their policies that was not motivated by profit?

The idiotic and specious comment 'We think users who use less should pay less' comment is a farce. Well then identify who those users are, and charge them less.

What the real argument is, and prectically everyone already gets this, is that they are trying to take an unlimited commodity, and limit it for their own personal gain.

This doesn't just affect the customers though, this will affect a lot more than that. Services like Netflix and iTunes depend on customers using them, if customers were suddenly paying more for broadband the first things to get cut would be any services they are currently paying for. If this was severe enough it could seriously hamper certain businesses and cause more job losses and contribute to even more of an economic decline than what we are already in! If Netflix cannot sell streaming video it would likely shut down at least a whole division of Netflix. If Apple could not sell music through iTunes then they would not sell iPods, which would be huge since no one would bother buying them since it would cost double or triple what it does now to use an iPod.

Not to mention that I am sure the gaming industry which is moving closer and closer to an all-digital model has a lot to say about this, and this is not even including those who play games online, you would be paying triple the cost just to download the large game file.

This is not even including the huge work-at-home sector and people who have their own businesses that depend on a one-price solid internet connection. There just so many implications that are bad with a pay-per-use model for internet service.

The reason they can't "educate" people on this is because there's no precedent for it. Let's compare it to it's closest cousin, the cell phone. You'd have to buy a cellphone that offers only a single "one-size-fits-all" plan that is different for each model of cellphone, with, say, 100 ($40 / month cellphone), 200 ($60 / month cellphone), or 400 minutes ($199/month cellphone). If you own the 100 minute cellphone you need to use a different cellphone to do 200 minutes, for example.

Each minute after that costs $1 per minute, despite the fact that with the cheapest per-minute plan (200 minutes) you're paying $0.30 per minute. When you try to buy another 200 minute cellphone to save money, the company blocks your attempts. When you try to ask them to just bill you twice the price and give you 400 minutes on your 200 minute cellphone the company won't do it.

You realize that there's no way to actually give your money in a reasonable manner to this company. The company works on the same alternate reality the IRS does, where what you pay isn't directly proportional (or even proportional in a buying-in-bulk-is-cheaper) to what you make.

This is where the issue sets in. The same thing is coming to Canada by way of Bell Canada's (soon to be, but not yet passed) billing scheme that will be applied against virtually any ISP that offers DSL service (unless they want to come to your neighborhood with a backhoe, that is).

Lopping off a bit of precision:

First 60 GB: $20 ($0.33/GB).
Next 10 GB: $22 ($2.2/GB for this portion, $0.60/GB overall).
Next 230 GB: $0 ($0/GB for this portion, $0.14/GB overall).
Next GB (and every GB after that): $1/GB ($0.35/GB overall at 400 GB, $0.57/GB at 600 GB, up to a maximum of $0.86/GB on a fully saturated 5/0.8 mbit line).

So, yeah, you tell me why people would be confused when they can end up paying as much as 6x more per GB because they use their internet more. In what crazy-ass world do prices start reasonably low for a few widgets, then suddenly shoot through the roof if you buy the "wrong amount", then get dirt cheap if you buy a bunch more, and then all of a sudden get super-expensive if you order more than that amount? That doesn't follow any normal laws of economics I've heard of.

It follows the law of stupidity is what it follows.

The normal way of doing things metered like this (for consumers, Tier 1 ISPs use 95th percentile billing or just charge per mbit the pipe can handle) would be to charge a base connection cost. This just gives you carrier. You'd then have a base charge per GB used, starting at GB 0 (hey, you're in this for profit, yes?), and you'd charge a surcharge per GB used during peak hours (since this affects the size of the pipe the ISP needs coming in--your torrents at 3 am cost the ISP zilch, due to the aforementioned billing methods). That'd be it.

That would actually make sense. And it would actually save most consumers money, and heavy users would be funding the network proper. Oh wait, there's the problem! You'd have to first of all offer what your premium (heavy) users want (which most ISPs here *don't* do, witness traffic shaping) and you'd have to second actually spend the dough to get decent service to the door and into your network.

@dbshaw: Actually, the top proposed tier was $75 a month, with an overage cap of no more than $75. So, for truly "unlimited" data, it could cost up to $150 a month.

Also happening in North Carolina, per a friend who lives there. I think this says pretty much the exact same thing, though.

[www.news-record.com]

@mac-phisto: & if that's what you want to do, go for it. i suggest 6 mos. of "metered bills" (along with the future proposed rate) before you adjust your billing method so that customers can determine how much their bill will change.

Now that is a good point...

@palookapalooza: Ahh, I must have misread, I was under the impression that TWC's original plan was 150 for effective unlimited, but I thought they'd changed it so it was 75.

A change from 40/mo to 150/mo only in markets with no competition is even more glaring.

@Warll: 100 gigs is a decent amount. A movie of minimally watchable quality will usually be about a gig. Even at DVD quality, they're only about 2-4 gigs. Even with a 100% seed ratio and accounting for other web broswing, you'd easily be able to torrent about 25 movies.

Looking at it the other way, the time warner cap is 20,000,000 bytes (about 20 gigs). A mediocre quality streaming radio station will be pumping at 128 kilobits/second. That's about 1 megabyte per minute and 1000 minutes to reach the cap. 1000/60 = 16 hours and 40 minutes. That's a little more than 30 minutes of streaming audio per day. That's where they want to set the Time Warner cap.

@TheFuzz53: Not quite fully though. I think caps are okay, but not the ridiculously low ones proposed.

As someone that worked back end, if you are 100% opposed to caps and torrent more than 40gb / month, your personal bill should be 10 times higher than it is now. Yes, that means anywhere from 200-500 dollars per month.

@dangermike: oops, my math was off by a fact of 1000. Just ignore my last post.

@mac-phisto: metered broadband will not work out well any time soon, because it does not work like other utilities. TW has to pay to get you up to a certain available speed. Once there, the cost difference between using 1MB or 1GB in any time frame is negligible, even multiplied over many subscribers.

OTOH, when you (and everybody else) use more electricity, more has to be produced. When you use more water, more water must be gathered and processed. Data networks don't work that way. So, when you see metered billing come up, there's a 99.99% chance it is designed to get people to pay more (as you use more, FI, you will need to go up to the next tier--now a light user is not on the bottom tier; TW billing folks sing and dance).

@dangermike: so to correct myself, it would be about a megabyte per minute, which would translate to 20,000 minutes/month, which is actually closer to 11 hours a day at a what I consider a minimally listenable sound quality, and that would translate to about 1-2 hours of streaming video of a similar quality per day.

@johnva: since TW offers many services, and has monopolies on them in many areas, I wouldn't be surprised if you are right.

@segfault: I was tempted to Godwin this. Badly. But, I will refrain. Still, that begs for the probabiluty to reach 1.

You 3% who voted that TWC is right are all going to hell.

@Inglix_the_Mad: Why do you believe that I should have to pay more than anyone else for using it more? I don't get a discount for watching less tv or for making less phone calls, and I don't pay more taxes for using public roads more

Assholes. I'll educate them as soon as my contract is up. I'm not misinformed, I'm quite well informed. Sadly, because they're not doing this in my area, I can't get out early.

What an awful, awful idea.

Those who use less will pay the same; those who use more will pay more.

Those who used less paid more for years. Why does Time Warner believe they should pay less now?

You know what I find kind of amusing? The fact that [as of this moment] 3% of people said TWC was 'right'.

I usually try to understand how people think and what reasons they have for thinking a certain way. In this case, I think those who voted for TWC likely saw the popular catchphrase "Those who use less should pay less/Those who pay more should pay more". This was more than likely immediately appealing to those persons.

I'm not saying who's 'wrong or right', I just found it kind of interesting that people would side with the company.

@jarhead906: Or they just wanted to be trolls.

@johnva: This is entirely the reason. Their internet business is very profitable, but only if they can keep their cable TV business alive. Raise rates, restrict the internet, and they will need shovels to count their profits.

@dangermike: Exactly. Nobody has a problem with the "use more, pay more" billing. They have a problem with the incredibly small download cap that is designed to push people towards TWC's high-bandwidth video services.