American Cable Association Wants Bandwidth Caps

[bill gates is your daddy]

F them all. Wilson, NC has the right idea with Greenlight. This is where all TV, phone and ISP should be headed. Local communities should start banding together and create their own local fiber network and shoot both fingers at these greedy corporations.

I really wish that people would get their heads out of their ass long enough to see this as the pot at the end of the rainbow. A publicly owned fiber ISP free from the constraints of companies like time-warner. A service that is controlled by the community's vote not a greedy CEO.

I have really been thinking about how I can propose this to my community at a townhall meeting. I wonder if the officials in Wilson, NC would be open to start making community tours to talk about the Greenlight project and how they made it work.

 

[mage182]

Over the past 12 months my Cablevision services has grown significantly slower. So now they're going to couple slower service with a tiered data plan? If it comes to that I'll probably just cancel my TV and pay a little more for internet and just download any of the TV or movies I want to watch.

Things are supposed to get faster and better with time. Not slower and more limited. What are we paying all this money for?

 

[jacobdrj]

[citation][nom]leckig[/nom]this is because you never actually used it, otherwise you would know how much it sucks[/citation]
Except that I did use it in the late 90's, and am fully aware of how much it sucks for things like gaming and would be bad for VOIP, however, it is a viable alternitive to caps and dialup for straight downloading.

 

[dman3k]

American cable companies are monopolies.

Look at the internet speed in Europe and Asia and their prices. 100Mb for the equivalent of $40 USD?

Nuff said!

 

[rodney_ws]

This is greed plain and simple... and it will be allowed to happen because many of us do not have choices in selecting our ISP. Why else did cable companies roll out these tiered packages in markets where they had no competition?!? Why not try something like that were Verizon FIOS is available?

I pay $74 every month for a telephone line (I don't use it) and a 1.5 Mb/s DSL connection... am I crazy for doing that? No... I just don't have a choice. Satellite does not provide the latency I require so I'm stuck trucking along with my backwoods ISP.

Pray to whatever Gods you worship that Verizon rolls out its service everywhere and that they don't resort to tiers, caps and throttling. If bandwidth usage is going up and the cost of bandwidth is going down, it just seems like there is already parity and no need for a change.

 

[ram1009]

Cable companies, like everybody else, are in the business of maximizing profits. End of story.

 

[hardwarekid9756]

Qwest doesn't have broadband caps.
Neither does SBC Globalnet.
DSL just doesn't have caps.
You know why? They're on the superior infrastructure. Cable internet worked because they had extra bandwidth on their existing Coaxial infrastructure they could apportion out to network traffic. They've since expanded their channels to digital, a necessity to apportion more coax to data. They just ain't got the chops to compete with something like DSL, which is essentially a purpose-built network.

All this capping is going to do is drive people to DSL. DSL is flawed inherently, but not as badly as the Cable Internet model. Until there are 3 network infrastructures available (Digital Cable(coax), Digital Voice(RJ-45, etc), and Digitial Internet(Fibre Optic)) This capped BSticles will never go away. And then, if the capped does get implemented, we'll never get flat-rate again, because it's not profitably feasible.
And on top of this, think about the lost REVENUE this is going to generate. This WILL NOT help the bottom line, no matter what top execs are pitching. in the end, they're going to need the same maintenance staff, the same amount of upgrade/expansion, and the same level of technology, they'll just be getting their money out of screwing people who DON'T want to pay more by putting money back into the hands of people who are WILLING to pay the flat rate. All of this "Money saving" is just corporate jargon, and will never see any tangible basis. They'll write off restructuring (people they'dve fired anyway) as part of the consumption-model, they'll accredit increased customer base to the model, and not general expansion, and they'll keep pulling these "Top 2%" stats, just like a certain government we all know and love, and we'll keep getting the shaft.

The internet is more like cable TV and less like electric/heating. I don't have to pay a nominal fee every time I watch a channel. Or a TV show. I would love to pay 10$ a month for 50hrs of TV and 50c for every 30min apportion of TV i watch beyond, but that's not how it works, and it shouldn't be like that for internet either.

 

[antilycus]

well, too bad all the employees of Time Warner and other cable companies are going to lose their jobs when a massive amount of customers switch over to a dedicated fiber solution offered by whomever can get it the cheapest. I know i will be switching(along with all my friends) THE DAY that TIER pricing starts.

 

[Guest]

right, increase the bandwidth of my tv to hd and now I lose my internet

 

[Regulas]

These companies are all drunk with $$ signs and that is the real truth.

 

[wayneepalmer]

For cable broadband, this is not just about killing Netflix and other movie streamers. It's also about killing VOIP sites like Vonage and Magicjack (which competes with their own VOIP's) and the rise of free Webcam streaming on Yahoo, Tokbox, Skype, and others.
They want to focus their monopoly competition around the country between cable and DSL. Having other alternatives cuts into their resources. If they kill everything except their own VOIP and the phone line that comes with DSL, it limits their competition in the home market to cable verses AT&T.

 

[harshahorizon]

internet is not a particularly efficient way to deliver high-res video.........WHAT hey dude what age u are living in ?.....think about then speak.fat pigs they only want to make money.... greediness is epic

 

[harshahorizon]

[citation][nom]ram1009[/nom]Cable companies, like everybody else, are in the business of maximizing profits. End of story.[/citation]
totally

 

[crom]

Cable companies are trying to raise the 'perceived value' of internet bandwidth, particularly to uneducated customers. If Japan and South Korea can keep up with capacity and grow why can't the United States? Its pathetic. This is crying for a new niche market to take the business away from cable. I'm looking at you Fios!

 

[badaxe2]

Just another way ISPs are taking advantage of customers. Maybe we should've been ready for FiOS by now and this wouldn't have been a problem.

 

[10tacle]

Obama promises to be the first "high tech" president in part of his "change" image. When is his administration going to start going after this cable company BS? Or are they just politicians like everyone else and only caring about what is important to *them* and make them look good?

 

[Platypus]

The fact that this discussion has reached 5 full pages of comments says a lot about the topic. I wonder if the ISPs are taking notice.

One thing is certain: Stiff your customers and you will notice a very big drop in revenue.

 

[Mathos]

[citation][nom]Renegade_Warrior[/nom]This just plain sucks!The Cable companies will most likely use a lot of the extra money from the higher fees to line their pockets. IE: 6 digit salaries for the top administrative positions.If they do go ahead with this, then they should be made to invest most all of the money back into the infrastructure while reducing administrative salaries to reasonable levels.[/citation]


Only 6 digits? You're not thinking big enough..... last time i checked the CEO of TWC was making what, close to $15m to $25m a year?

 

[sgtpham]

Are the cable companies complaining about the downloads of tv shows to the cable box. That has to be a good chunk of the download on a cable network. What competitive market, as far as I am in my market there is only cable and a few others. If the cable companies decided this route then I will go with a service that is less but does not give me a cap. Having a cap is worst then having a slower internet connection.

 

[theuerkorn]

[citation][nom]Dyseman[/nom]Well no Crap! Using Natural Gas, Propane and even Electricity requires fuel, resources etc. So yeah, it will go UP in the winter.Internet is on a friggin' network of ping ponging signals. I can understand if their Electric company charges more because electricity went up, we should help cover the electric bill. But why cap? There's no need to cap. A cable hub, server, etc, probably uses the same energy whether they are Idle or running full tilt. So whether I just check mail 1 month and watch Netflix on Xbox360, use vonage phone and play MMORPGs for a month shouldn't even make them blink. If they want to limit us, limit us by Mbps, not by how much we transfer! Hell, how much Bandwidth is eaten from the CableModem sitting ilde w/o a computer even turned on just staying active to the network? What if you watched everything you did to Try not to hit the cap, but Pop-ups, Block Ads, hell, even Windows, Anti-virus and other stuff self updating and self checking for updates eating away GB's you don't even know. Yeah, they won't even eat 1MB, but in a month's time all updaters that can be run on a machine adds up. Multi computer home? wow! Myself 2 computers. Wife 2 computers. 2 kids with computers and school wireless notebooks. Wow. So I'll get to cancel Netflix, Gold Membership on XBox. 4 EQ2 Accounts. Vonage Telephone and just go Cell. Screw sending the family our pictures and baby's first words. Makes me want to go back to Dial up on principle (Just a hell of a lot faster). Look up Greed in Dictionary... A.C.A. Need a new Internet Transit system![/citation]

I agree. However, it's a way to manage the limited bandwidth and to be honest it's also a way to charge people more. "Basic" plans are certainly not going to be cheaper by the same magnitude as overages will cost. It's similar to wireless services, caps are a way to convince you to pay for the larger plan for a higher steady income for the company.

 

[o0 zeno 0o]

I think there's more to it than just wanting to protect their TV Services. I think Cable companies in particular are also more likely to be wrestling with hardware costs and upgrades.

Regardless, it's all a bunch of crap. At the end of the day, Cable Companies don't want to pay for network upgrades nor do they want to facilitate Netflix's streaming in competing with their on-demand, or IPTV replacing their ridiculously priced TV packages.

For the record, Internet isn't like heat. We don't consume a costly resource like natural gas or energy. It's most like cellphone networks, which ironically enough are starting to move to unlimited plans.

 

[Guest]

Cable companies are insane. When FIOS came to my area about 2 years ago, I immediately signed up with Verizon for 30/5 service for $54.95/mo and I ditched Comcast Cable faster than you can blink. Comcast begged me to come back with all these special deals but still couldn't not provide the level service for the price that Verizon was offering. Since then I've upgraded my FIOS service to 50/20 for $89.95/mo. Comcast recently tried to get me back and I told them that I would come back if they could give me 50/20(or faster) service with NO CAPS for an equivalent price or less. They couldn't do it.

Everyone is ditching Comcast where I live and getting FIOS. I honestly don't know a single person who still has Comcast Cable. I'm surprised they haven't gone out of business yet in my area.

 

[esotericjester]

So if their position is that old ladies using less than 1 GB per month should be charged less than people with higher usage, when should these old ladies expect the refund checks for all of the time that they were being ripped off?

Note: I will readily admit that I did not read all of the comments so if someone already said this I have to say that they copied me in advance.

 

[ImmortalJman]

OK. So I can see the point they're coming from if their cost went up to provide the higher usage but in general costs have remained the same or lowered. Then on top of that I think that if you look at it from a business perspective I think it might be possible for them to make more money with the current flat rate pricing than switching to tier pricing. That all depends on the caps, pricing, OVERAGES!, etc that would go into making that pricing structure.

I like how he uses a valid consumption use example but against the wrong model. Internet consumption is like air, it's recycled more or less. It's only depleted as more users get on and use more at the same time, but once the activity stops the 'stockpile' goes back up. Gas is not like the internet.

Now between 4 macs, 2 pcs, a 360, a PS3, and a Wii, that can add up to a lot of service packages quickly, especially for the Macs. I don't actually use a whole heck of a lot of bandwidth, BUT I have to download a crap load of updates all the time. Then, if I wanted to video chat with my family, the list goes on.

In my opinion this certainly is meant to compete with Netflix, Hulu, Joost, etc so that the cable companies stay in business. It's funny that here we are with companies trying to screw us in the best nation in the world when more than 2/3rd's of other countries have A LOT higher bandwidth for about the same price and oh yeah, NO PRICE CAPS. This will not help develope our practical use of the internet among more people but hinder it. It's my hope that just because all these greedy cable company guys get together that they don't just get whatever they want.

 

[sharken]

After reading all the comments, i got 3 words for cable companies "GO F&*K YOURSELVES"