@cristiana:

And with Speakeasy, mostly guaranteed uptime.

personal insults, that's always real classy - maybe if you had anything intelligent/worthwhile to say you wouldn't have to reduce yourself to the level of a 3rd grader, mmmmmkay?

Anyone know if earthlink (which uses twc) avoids the 40GB cap? I may switch to earthlink if this is possible.

Other options for austinites: ATT U-verse, Grande (in some areas)

I used grande when living in north central austin a few years ago, it worked amazingly well, just have to get a fiber-box + UPS setup outside your house.

No, that would be
*\
>:( X

(that's supposed to be a shield and a mace)

Seemed like a good option though.

This is not going to be well-received in Rochester.

Where I live unfortunately does not position me to be able to have a satellite dish for television so in truth, my only option is TWC, which I hate. I'm unhappy with their rates and unhappy with their service, but there is no other service provided and so I am forced to use them.

I've tried contacting AT&T and Verizon (for Fios) to see when/if they will be installing in my area and neither gives any information. Does anyone have any possible way that I can get something done with this? I hate not having any choices and I can see our complex being a viable market for either company's service if only they would take the time and money to install in my area.

I'd greatly appreciate any help with information on methods of getting things done because I don't know how much more I can cope with TWC. :(

Oh, 2 years ago was when Cox started tiering their pricing based on speeds. Their caps are unofficial and unpublished.

Cable broadband is not regulated since it is "information technology", not "communication technology" per FCC.

Uverse is here in Austin, but not in this house, or our next one. No good. Time to shop around, no way could I limit myself that much, we work from home twice a week and a lot at night, and also download all our TV and movies (cancelling cable soon for that anyhow, but looks like it might be ALL cable now)

I was told that the "monitoring program to see how much bandwidth people normally use" wouldn't start until the end of the year and that it would not affect my speeds or service at any time. This was all from a lady named Carmen in Customer Assistance.

Do I believe Carmen? Hell no. Do I believe she believes in what she's saying? Yep. Am I screwed since FIOS isn't even in my service area? Yep again. Time to start writing to Cuomo.

Yeah - this is the way to be competitive. Offer less value for more money.

What kind of a business model have US companies been developing over the last decade that makes the "what the customer wants is always wrong"? A lot of the big business' deserve to go under. Offering little more than re-written press releases killed journalism. 'Pay for play' killed radio. Now they want to kill the internet.

I wonder what will come on the black market?

If I do end up getting one, I think I'll follow your advice to see if it works for me as well. Can't hurt to try, right?

Cox in Az has had tiered service for years now - only with speed: [ww2.cox.com] (and unofficial caps). If you live in a building over 5 years old, there is NO alternative. They could charge $1k/mth and people would still have to pay it for high speed.

I have had my service degraded from when I first got cable. There's no doubt it's slower, more latency than it was 5 years ago. It's also down more and more - with never a refund. I've had it go out nightly for 3 months and still no accountability because there's no choice.

Yet I've paid more yearly for "upgrades" to their system.

This is worse than more taxes and could stall the economy for years - comparable to credit cards cutting people off for no reason. It's like the economic dark ages.

Well, they are "Time Warner", a huge media conglomerate. They're thinking ahead, so that you'll have to pay more to watch HD over your broadband connection, or be forced to *gasp* buy a pay-per-view movie or buy into their higher-priced movie tier to watch something. Kind of like charging you for gas, then charging you to use the pump. Too bad they don't have FIOS there, I am originally from near Greensboro and I would have thought they would have FIOS before I got it in Central Virginia!

@Andrew Mitcham: I wish that Charter would crumble here in Greenville, SC. I absolutely hate them.

alex.dudley@twcable.com
Alex Dudley, vice president of public relations for Time Warner Cable

jeff.simmermon@twcable.com
Director of Digital Communications

here's a link to daily kos dairy:
[www.dailykos.com]

Hush your mouth. shhh. If it gets bad enough, I hope people go back to dial-up in protest.

Being Obama is in office, we need to push un franchising local cable service and guarantee more than 1 company providing same service with same methods. in my case, all I have is monopolistic cable and satellite and those aren't any competition at all since cable serves city and satellite serves rural.

I can't wait until Verizon FIOS comes, as I have friends who have that services in other states and they state it is much better.

Well, given that you can get a 12Mbps connection from Comcast today for the same price that a 3Mbps connection cost 4 years ago, I don't think that we're paying "more and more" for it.

---
Dear Mr. McDonald,

Thank you for contacting Time Warner Cable Email Support.

I understand that you have heard about the cap on Internet usage and are upset about it.

I apologize for the inconvenience and I will be glad to assist you.

I can understand your concern and frustration regarding the cap on Internet usage.

Time Warner Cable understands and embraces the evolution of the importance of the way people are now
consuming Internet content. We encourage current innovations, and want to ensure our business model
is fair to all subscribers.
Video over the Internet is an interesting and growing phenomenon - one that we will watch closely.
The impacts are not immediate, but long-term, and that is how we will focus our attention.
Regardless of the direction of this trend, Time Warner Cable is well-positioned to meet our
customers growing needs.
Our goal is to provide the best possible Internet experience for ALL of our customers, not to let
the minority affect the majority. The vast majority of our customers will see no difference in their
monthly bill.
The challenge is to find an equitable way to charge customers so that we can pay for necessary
infrastructure upgrades. We are looking to create a business model that will allow customers to
choose the speed and consumption package that makes sense for their household Internet usage.
With a consumption based billing plan, all customers will have access to a ?gas gauge? that will
enable them to track their consumption against their plan. A customer will have three months to get
comfortable with the gauge before the bill hits. We don?t want our customers to have any
unpleasant surprises.
Some of our customers may actually save money by ?right-sizing? to a plan that meets their needs.
We are happy to help them do that.

We value you as a customer, and please feel free to E-mail us again or contact our Live Chat at the
following link: [redacted]

Customer Support is available 24x7.

Sincerely,
Stella Jones

Time Warner Cable Online Customer Service

We always welcome valuable feedback, which ensures that we have provided a complete
resolution/information.

We want your feedback! Please select the link below if you would like to receive short survey on
your experience with our service.

We don't download tons, but we disagree with the metered concept because when it's time for an OS upgrade or my husband needs to occasionally download something from a server at work, we don't want to be penalized for it.

We're actually the ones they want to keep...the perfect-payment-record, non-high-users (95% of the time), stable customers. Losing us would suck for them.

I have written to Earthlink and asked them if my service will be affected...if so, it's a complete deal killer since I upload and download large documents, software, and graphics for work and that cap won't last me more than a day or two. Downloading one piece of software will eat the whole thing!

I have Sprint cellular broadband (unlimited, grandfathered), and I'll use it as a stopgap if I have to, but it won't extend to my husband's computer, and he sells stuff on eBay. They have some kind of hybrid service for whole-house Internet that I may have to go to.

But I'm really betting that Earthlink - which has always been awesome - will tell TWC where to stick it.

Did I mention there is also pretty much nothing for kids to do in my area, there really is nothing (especially for the 8 and up age group, most children's entertainment here only caters to the smallest of kids), so they turn to technology and video games for entertainment. Either that or they are out on the streets, which is much worse than having them at home in front of the PC/TV/iPod. Anyways when they are out on the streets, they always have an iPod, cell phone or gaming system in hand also.

The former is new and horrible news... the latter being older news....

maybe you should go outside and/or do something that doesn't involve staring at a screen....?

Bean accumulators, then. I stand corrected.

I still say, watch out, evil companies. We are coming after you.

Zombie consumers!!! 8-\

You must be a techie or work with computers for a living. I can't imagine more than 10-20% of US households actually fitting this description (and thank God for that!)

Clearwire I use at work- so I know better.

Between AT&T and Verizon, what's their capping?

@kaceetheconsumer:

I got basically the same answer when I called about Greensboro, NC. I tried to explain the difference between a "power user" and a "mom and pop who only check their email" user. It went right over their heads. Of course they had no idea about pricing. Would you pay $55 a month for only 40GB of data? Not me.

They die, and I'll personally pop a bottle of the finest wine when they declare bankruptcy.

The combination of current austin resident and former Time Warner user just got more common starting with me.

Let's hope it does happen! Any company sleazy enough to feature video ads on their websites that start to play automatically doesn't deserve to be in business. I happily use Ad Blocker as well as a Flash Block add-on, and love every minute of it. The web has degenerated into such a manic clusterf*ck of sensory overload, it'd be great to send a message to some of these tools that people want their basic HTML info, not a million different on-screen ads, videos, moving elements, and other crap that freeze up your computer and slows down your whole system. Enough is enough already with advertisements online. If I want the product, I'll seek you out - don't try to ram it down my freaking throat.

I left a comment that we will leave the service if it goes metered. Hopefully the comment is actually recorded and read by someone. If enough people actually do that rather than just whining, they might pay attention.

Blame management here. Accounting departments definitely have their flaws, but it's generally management who comes up with the harebrained plans to reduce expenses or increase revenue.

Actually, you should get in touch with Stardock (saw the Demigod beta)- this is a threat to their business model as well. Maybe Valve as well.

We probably easily use 40gb a week. Between a house full of geeks, home offices and watching shows online.

I guess I'll try to threaten leaving to see if I can get the rate to stay the same.

What is TWC thinking by instituting this in a young, tech hub like Austin?

Try this where there is actually competition and you will probably see many customers leaving TWC as a result. This way they introduce this horrible idea and it becomes just another inconvenience of life when it finally rolls out nation wide.

Cancelling service tomorrow- what are some good options locally.

I will NEVER get anything from TWC again. When I get my house next year, Satellite TV here I come.

I wonder if this is for all customers or just new ones? The local news here in Greensboro has a blurb about it :

[www.myfox8.com]

Need a list for TWC EECB on this matter. Anyone got a good list to share?

So, for the most part, ad blockers will decrease your total overall bandwidth usage.

We're in trouble if that comes to TWC HVC where I live; the only DSL is Frontier and they ALREADY have a 5GB cap. Perhaps with FiOS next door to me in Newburgh, we MIGHT be safe for a while.

We're learning something from this crappy economy, you evil companies...watch out.

For example this is what I consider typical use, I use a non limited ISP.
Last month I downloaded close to 120gb. I watch nearly all tv shows via Hulu/torrents/etc. I play alot of beta games (woo Demigod) so every update is multiple gigs. Non beta games still have updates in excess of 300mb. MMO's like Guild Wars use a download as needed for new areas. TeamSpeak is constantly streaming. And I'm the one ISP's hate because I use it to it's fullest potential.

Time Warner is starting to make comcast look GOOD.

I have several questions with this...

1) What about people with more than one PC? My wife and I both have laptops and we both use the internet...sometimes at the same time. Will I be limited to 40GBs just for the both of us?

2) What about online gaming? I like to play online with my PS3. How much data does that really use?

This really pisses me off - esp being in the GSO market. I already hate TWC with a passion, but it's the only thing decent...

Bastards...

So you two nerds are to blame! I was wondering why my Netflix Instant Queue on our Xbox has been so freakin' slow lately (I mean I know its TWC, its ALWAYS TWC!)

:o)

Seriously, though, I know they are capping Dallas next, I can just feel it. Does anyone out there know if HD Tivos work with AT&T Uverse or Verizon FIOS? I know satellite is out because of the Cable card issue.

But people think they are immune, and they are not. Got kids, then you have iPods, the Ipod touch uses the internet. Your daughters iPod touch probably pulls 5GB a month easily just for Wifi use, if not more. This does not count music downloads and app downloads, and video downloads for the iPod.

Got kids, then you have gaming consoles, almost all gaming consoles use the internet these days. This includes the Nintendo DS, Sony PSP and the new Nintendo DSi also features a very viable, full internet browser. The Nintendo Wii is connected to the internet almost all the time as is the Sony PS3 and the Xbox360. I don't know a family here without an internet enabled gaming console and this is a very poor area.

You are not immune even if you are a casual PC user, because almost everything uses the internet these days. Heck even many children's toys are now connecting to the internet and are wifi enabled.

I'm in Rochester and this is going to screw me over. Someone said that threatening to switch to FIOS may work, but if you are actually in Rochester or a suburb, I can tell you it won't Buffalo and Syracuse have FIOS, but Frontier in Rochester keeps them out. Frontier's TOS impose a 5Gb cap as "acceptable use" (although its enforcement is questionable), and now TWC is going to limit us to 40 Gb/month. Those are the only 2 real options here (Clearwire has a presence, but also has caps). So now Rochester is getting reamed back to the late 90's and I doubt we can do anything about it. Time to bend over and take it, good thing I'm out of here when medical school is over in 2 years.

I live in Austin, and may be switching to Uverse if they force a cap on me.

Things are only going to get worse from here as ISPs recognize that maybe there are ways to get around this whole "net neutrality" thing.

not the most user friendly site, but it's helpful

Fuck TWC. WCIA.

@emona: Although I use Verizon's DSL service here in NYC, I have a program called "NetLimiter 2 Monitor" running that tracks my usage. I started using when talk of limits were starting. It's a freebie. [www.netlimiter.com]

And for grins and giggles, I see that I used almost 30GB in March 2009. Other months this year show 14 and 18 GB values. I think in March I probably watched a couple of Netflix movies or tv shows (in standard def), so that's probably what bumped up my usage.

WTH. I have rabbit ears and so I watch a LOT of Hulu and Netflix streaming (ALL LEGAL!). More than 40GB a month, I'm willing to bet Thank Gods I live in Arizona.

#1. That is like 1/3 the speed of many countries, for like 3x the cost.
#2. The faster my speed, the faster I hit your synthetic data cap.

I don't have an issue with it now, but with things like Netflix streaming HD movies, or if you download shows/movies from Itunes...you can hit the cap pretty fast if you watch 1 movie or 2-3 shows a night, and they are HD.

More and more services are being offered through the internet. Magic Jack and Skype for phone calls, Netflix and others for movie streaming, a 'console free' gaming system is being rolled out now.

As these innovations continue, and as more and more developers program web-enabled applications, the bandwidth we all use will continue to increase.

All of this network traffic is being carried on the back of your ISP. Are they going to continue to provide you access to all of these services for a flat $40 a month?

I hope so. I hope their technology and efficiency continue to grow with the content. I hope competition keeps them in line.

But the airlines have shown us that once one carrier crosses a line, the rest are often happy to follow. Sure, we could all fly Southwest to avoid baggage fees, but Southwest doesn't go everywhere we need. Just like we all can't have FiOS.

I'd like to also point out that it'll only be a few years until the generation that grew up playing games and watching streaming movies online will be in their own apartments. When the email-only, Bejeweled playing grannies die and are replaced by the xXFraggerKingXx's of the world, the burden on the ISPs will increase.

@jpmoney: Switch to UVerse. I've never been happier!

[blog.streamingmedia.com]

That would limit your movie watching to 2 movies if you're capped at 5GB a month, and 20 movies if you're on the 40GB cap... and that's for Netflix' SD movies. It would be even less for HD movies.

This method of capping has it's plus sides... it is net neutral, but considering the dirt cheap cost of bandwidth these days, it's entirely unnecessary. That's why they do this in markets where there's little to no competition. Who the hell are you going to switch to? I'm lucky enough to have FiOS where I live, so this crap would never fly here. The former Charter monopoly here is crumbling so fast, I doubt they'll be around much longer.

@Murph1908:

I regularly update my HOSTS file to block advertisements from auto Streaming..

Not that that would make the caps any better, of course.

Yeah, I know, this is all hypothetical, but it could happen.

What a scam.

If I am pushing my cap, I'll start to get pretty mad at sites that are automatically streaming video advertisements.

So, at that point, I am PAYING to view a commercial?

To hell with that.

I'm about to have U-verse it seems.

Honest question - does this change my contract enough that a 2 year price contract I signed is null and void? I think this is similar to the mobile phone companies changing the cost of text messages.

@Nathan Yost:

I'm almost positive that streaming Netflix movies counts against your cap. If you stream a movie occasionally, I wouldn't be too concerned.

Metered billing wouldn't be so bad if there was a benefit to the consumer using less bandwidth.

I don't have confirmation of this information, so I'm taking it with a grain of salt.