Comments on: Consumption Based Billing – Time Warner Wants It

By: Diego

Diego — Sun, 24 May 2009 03:32:19 +0000

first of all, hello to all.
im an outsourcer for TWC working at customer service,
all of you make exellent points, it is true that, paying for what u use would make a lot of people´s service cost a lot more, but its also true that other people may pay less…
just to make it clear im entirely against this new billing method, which has not taken place yet, n i hope it never does, what the first person said its true, that if someone uses it more n does not allow u to get the service that ur paying for, then they should pay more, but then u have to think about all the small business n house business that use the service, and that HAVE to use more bandwith than other, they would be greatly affected by this, so this is like a double edge razor,
Of course to time warner theres no loss here, its all profit…
but hey, we havent been told of this change yet, i saw it on the website, so i guess it wont happen anytime soon. hopefully it will never happen

By: Eric L.

Eric L. — Wed, 06 May 2009 17:21:15 +0000

If this ever does happen, I’ll be charging the cable co. for all the GB that I wasn’t able to D/L. Every time the lines are down, or I’m not able to get to a site.

It’s the same with Doctor’s offices…. They make you reschedule if your 5 min late, but it’s OK if they make you wait 30-60 min in the waiting room to see them…. as if you don’t have other commitments, appointments, work, or a life…. as if their time is more valuable than their’s.

So if the cable Co’s want to start limiting my connectivity, well, I’ll be sending them a bill, and I will follow up with harassing phone calls several times a day until payment is received.

Wouldn’t surprised me on bit if something like this comes to pass though…. It’s only a matter of time before you need to go to your local town hall and pay for a permit to fart in your own home….. oh wait, they all ready do that…they tax you for water and sewage….lol

Eric

By: Ryan Farmer

Ryan Farmer — Wed, 06 May 2009 02:26:12 +0000

“We look forward to bribing Senator Schumer, screwing over our customers and setting up a protection racket for any websites that want to be exempt as the process moves forward, to ensure that our customers feel like their opinion matters when we have no serious competition in their area, we will have a comment form with a submission button that immediately deletes their input. And we will continue to provide our customers with the crappy level of service and tons of outages that they expect and deserve from Time Warner Cable.”

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Tue, 05 May 2009 23:13:17 +0000

I hope that this idea never gets put in place. With everything going onto the internet how can they treat it like a utility. I personally have an in my household a 4 computers, an iPod Touch (uses my wifi), a 360, and a Wii. I would honestly venture to guess that atleast half of all the activities done on these systems are in the “cloud” of the internet. I have a netflix subscription and I stream movies to my TV from it. Over half the “television” I watch now comes over the internet.

Lets hope this is just a phase…

By: Spam Goats ~ Windows Fanatics

Spam Goats ~ Windows Fanatics — Tue, 05 May 2009 19:48:22 +0000

[...] Warner wants consumption-based billing for its [...]

By: John McElhenney

John McElhenney — Tue, 05 May 2009 19:31:42 +0000

Here’s a letter Google and others delivered to North Caronlina’s legislature in response to that states efforts to eliminate Municipal Broadband options. This is as Time Warner and Comcast are working in the other direction.

May 4, 2009

The Honorable Joe Hackney
Speaker
North Carolina House of Representatives
2207 State Legislative Building
Raleigh, NC 27601-1096

Dear Speaker Hackney:

We, the undersigned private-sector companies and trade associations urge you to oppose HB1252, the so-called “Level Playing Field Act.” HB1252 is “level” only in the sense that it will harm both the public and private sectors. It will thwart public broadband initiatives, stifle economic growth, prevent the creation or retention of thousands of jobs, and diminish quality of life in North Carolina. In particular, it will hurt the private sector by undermining public-private partnerships, hamstringing our ability to sell our goods and services, interfering with workforce development, and stifling creativity and innovation.

The United States is currently suffering through one of the most serious economic crises in decades. We also continue to lag behind the leading nations in per capita broadband adoption, access to high-capacity networks, cost per unit of bandwidth, and growth of new broadband users. To address these concerns, Congress and the Obama Administration have made more than $7 billion available to catalyze public and private efforts to accelerate deployment of broadband infrastructure and services. States can ill afford to enact measures like HB1252, which impair use of these broadband funds and the ability of the public and private sectors to work hand-in-hand to reverse these trends.

We support strong, fair and open competition to ensure users can enjoy the widest range of choice and opportunities to access content online, which is the heart of economic development in an information-based global market. HB1252 is a step in the wrong direction. North Carolina should be lowering barriers to public broadband initiatives rather than establishing new ones, so that we and other high technology companies can spread and prosper across this beautiful state. Please oppose HB1252.

Sincerely,

Alcatel-Lucent
American Public Power Association
Atlantic Engineering Group, Inc.
EDUCAUSE
Fiber to the Home Council
Google, Inc.
Intel Corporation
Utilities Telecom Council
Telecommunications Industry Association

cc: Governor Bev Perdue (by fax)
Secretary of Commerce J. Keith Crisco (by fax)
Rep. Hugh Holliman (by email)
Rep. William Wainwright (by email)
Rep. Paul Stam (by email)
Senator Marc Basnight (by email)
Senator Tony Rand (by email)
Senator Katie Dorsett (by email)
Senator Phil Berger (by email)
Senator R.C. Soles (by email)
Rep. Ty Harrell (by email)
Senator David Hoyle (by email)
House Public Utilities Committee members (by email)

Check http://meterthis.net and http://stopthecap.com for more information on this fight.

Peace,
@jmacofearth

By: Ron Schenone

Ron Schenone — Tue, 05 May 2009 19:24:54 +0000

This is kind of like the credit card companies. Raising rates and making them retro on your previous balance. What the hell is going on in our society? Greed seems to have taken over everything.

By: mhz

mhz — Tue, 05 May 2009 17:55:28 +0000

I see what you guys are saying. It sounds like you’re saying that they are offering this online TV service that they don’t really have the bandwidth to support smoothly, and now trying to pay for it on the fly by increasing the rates.

The right thing for them to do would be notify you BEFORE you signed up for the service that they were going to charge for bandwidth, and give you a breakdown of how many hours of online TV would equal how much $, so that you could compare against the cost of digital cable. That would sort of be fair.

I work at a hospital where the cafeteria sells all kinds of salad bar stuff that you can get yourself, for .30 cents/oz. Even though people see the sign warning them, there is not a scale for them to use, and they are terrible at estimating the weight, so they always have to pay more than they expected at the checkout.

It is embarrassing as an employee to see visitors treated that way. It is set up to trick them, intentionally or not.

You have to give customers an accurate way to judge how much it will cost them ahead of time, so they can make an informed decision, or else you’re just a lying manipulator, trying to steal their money.

By: Georges K.

Georges K. — Tue, 05 May 2009 15:01:23 +0000

Ron, I agree with you, I’m in the same exact boat. I canceled my digital cable with TW because I was able to get most of the shows I watch online. it looks like if they follow that route, we may end up better off just getting back our digital cable, and avoiding the potential congestion while watching all the shows…

It really does sound that this idea is going against the main stream of technology, and bandwidth requirements nowadays as whole.

I think about services like Netflix Instant watch … what will happen to them when people are going to start being conscientious about their bandwidth usage… perhaps, we should just go start waiting for the good’ole DVDs to get mailed to us, or better yet, go back to Blockbuster. tangent: last week, I went to rent a spur of the moment movie at blockbuster, and end up with 2 movies, and paid something like $10!! that’s almost a one month Netflix subscription! what are they thinking?!

Personally, I’d hate the fact that I’m being capped, and I usually tend to get an unlimited plan so that I wouldn’t have to worry about it (if I’m usually borderline on usage, of course).

By: » How Much of Your Life is Online?

» How Much of Your Life is Online? — Tue, 05 May 2009 14:02:13 +0000

[...] Time Warner wants Consumption-Based billing in their company. [...]