Time Warner Tries Internet Tiered Pricing

Time Warner has announced that it will conduct a trial run of tiered pricing for high-speed internet later this year.

The company, the second-largest cable provider in the United States, will start a trial in Beaumont, Texas, in which it will sell new Internet customers tiered levels of service based on how much data they download per month, rather than the usual fixed-price packages with unlimited downloads.
Company spokesman Alex Dudley said the trial was aimed at improving the network performance by making it more costly for heavy users of large downloads. Dudley said that a small group of super-heavy users of downloads, around 5 percent of the customer base, can account for up to 50 percent of network capacity.

All your internet are belong to us.

More: This type of service will probably affect me less than I fear. I don't download much video, except a movie off iTunes every once in a while. Still, I play an awful lot of Halo 3 on Xbox Live and I have absolutely no idea how much data up and down that takes.

But hardly matters. Y'know how much of a pain it is to buy the right amount of minutes for your cell phone? Feel like doing that with your internet, too?

Yeah, me neither.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 01:46 PM

Comments

Shit.

Posted by: Entropy at January 17, 2008 01:49 PM (m6c4H)

2 Well THIS should go over very well.

Posted by: Paradigm Shift at January 17, 2008 01:49 PM (/s5j6)

3 Okay. I'm out.

Posted by: Kasper Hauser at January 17, 2008 01:51 PM (KeOQp)

Oh yeah, the thin edge of the wedge!

Once they offer "discounts" for people as incentive to self-limit their internet usage, it's just another tiny step to limit everyone's bandwidth. Right now they can't get away with it since there's still some semblance of competition between internet providers, if they limit you, you just switch to a different provider. However once all the providers collude to limit bandwidth, it's just another tiny step to double the price...

Ace'll have to get his hobo-transexual porn from the library, like in the old days.

Posted by: 5Cats at January 17, 2008 01:51 PM (Knaf0)

Throwback to the 90's. AOL, Compuserve, etc. used to charge by online time in dialup daze.

Go over a specified limit: you were 'banned" for 24 hours.

I guess the Dems were right. Happy days re here again.

;-/

Posted by: Joe Mama at January 17, 2008 02:11 PM (QA8jC)

My university essentially does the same thing--total bandwidth is capped at 10 GB per week. Xbox 360 demo and video downloads hit that cap pretty quickly.

Posted by: James at January 17, 2008 02:26 PM (o+mFs)

7 Its not just game playing, actually games are pretty steamlined for bandwidth usage (although the needs are not insignificant) because lag is such a bitch for gamers. Web browsing takes a hell of a lot more bandwidth than people realize, especially since broadband became standard, web developers basically stopped giving a shit about how bloated a page was because as long as it loaded in a couple of seconds, noone cared too much.

Posted by: Ryan Frank at January 17, 2008 02:28 PM (KYS7R)

that a small group of super-heavy users of downloads, around 5 percent of the customer base, can account for up to 50 percent of network capacity.

I'd love to see how much porn is on those computers!

Posted by: Jay at January 17, 2008 02:29 PM (BNlV7)

9 I'd love to see how much porn is on those computers!

It probably isn't all porn, but you can bet a lot of it is.

Posted by: cranky-d at January 17, 2008 02:41 PM (kt4mn)

10 Yesterday I downloaded 10.42 gigs and uploaded 27.42 gigs. I may be part of that 5% that the article talks about.

Posted by: Shivv at January 17, 2008 02:44 PM (X/ME4)

The real bitch is in New York few areas have more than a single cable provider. The state allows city governments to create cable monopolies in their area, which means if Time Warner comes in and caps their Internet nost people will have no-one to switch to (TW is one of the biggest cable companies in New York).

Talk about BOHICA.

Posted by: Tristan at January 17, 2008 02:50 PM (0tV1H)

I'm pretty sure GCI and ACS does this already in Alaska, and Rogers/@Home did it in Ontario.

I know I'm in the minority here, but paying per use/MB make sense, as long as they roll over like minutes...right?

Posted by: John Galt at January 17, 2008 02:57 PM (8OFmt)

Dude, Halo 3 is for kiddies,

Call of Duty 4 is Halo for grown ups.

Posted by: cbs at January 17, 2008 03:02 PM (6uYaa)

14 CoD4 has elements that are too realistic for me. I prefer my gaming to look and feel like a game, thanks.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at January 17, 2008 03:15 PM (1Ug6U)

15 Fair enough, I can understand that.

Posted by: cbs at January 17, 2008 03:23 PM (6uYaa)

16 Seriously, I've just been opting out of services.

I don't do the the two year deal to get the free phone, and I'm thinking of ditching it.

I have the actual "basic" cable package. Not the one they call "basic", but the lowest you can get. $12/Month.

The stuffs just not worth it. Contracts change behind you back. Micro fees pile up. I'm not playing that game. I've been a computer programmer for 10 years. If it gets any worse, I'm going to do skilled manual labor. Perhaps get a commercial fishing boat or something.

You know the new "don't have to sign the receipt if its under $25 bucks" thing with the credit card. No thanks. As soon as they started doing that, I started paying in cash. Like Citbank is going to be responsive that someone else is using your card now that you don't even have to sign. And at the same time they start pushing identity theft protection for cards.

Screw it. I'm paying cash.

They do this with the net, I'm just dropping the service.

Posted by: LiveFreeOrDie at January 17, 2008 03:32 PM (g2SJC)

I know I'm in the minority here, but paying per use/MB make sense, as long as they roll over like minutes...right?

Well the bitch about it is this is a recipe for less bandwidth costing more.

I want more bandwidth and I want it to cost less. Other countries do it.... I don't see why we can't.

Posted by: Entropy at January 17, 2008 03:45 PM (m6c4H)

18 Like people need *another* reason to switch to FIOS?

Posted by: someone at January 17, 2008 04:07 PM (eCH82)

I dunno why everyone would ignore the best, free market solution to this.

Sell speed.

1mb down/512 up... $25/mo

10mb down/5mb up... $100/mo

No capping, none of that... just everyone decides if they need fast internet or slow internet.

And I deserve a medal for thinking up this incredible solution.

Posted by: Raptisoft at January 17, 2008 04:16 PM (C8O8M)

Well the bitch about it is this is a recipe for less bandwidth costing more.

True, but won't the free market, in turn, eventually settle on the "right" price? Makes it easier to compare - price per MB, minute, Gallon....etc. Maybe the ISP is actually a loss leader like consoles, which in turn make money off the games.

Hehe. Maybe the TV/Telephone side of the business is subsidising (sp?) the ISP side.

Posted by: John Galt at January 17, 2008 04:22 PM (8OFmt)

True, but won't the free market, in turn, eventually settle on the "right" price?

No.

In "the free market" market forces act as the regulatory body, determining things like price.

Artificially created monopolies are immune to market forces and must be regulated by ignorant corrupt assholes instead.

Posted by: Entropy at January 17, 2008 04:55 PM (m6c4H)

Artificially created monopolies are immune to insulated from market forces and must be regulated by ignorant corrupt assholes instead.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at January 17, 2008 05:03 PM (1Ug6U)

Artificially created monopolies are immune to market forces and must be regulated by ignorant corrupt assholes instead.

Hurm. Fair enough.

Posted by: John Galt at January 17, 2008 05:05 PM (8OFmt)

24 Talk about a step backward: this is how it used to be, pay per hour rather than lump sum of unlimited access. I hope it bombs.

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25 I guess all the various @home projects can kiss their connections goodbye.

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