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Go over your paltry monthly allotment of bandwidth and pay $1 per GB

Time Warner is starting a new internet access payment method trial in Beaumont, Texas that is a throwback to the early days of the Internet when you paid for the amount of data you sent or received rather than the simple flat rate virtually all internet users currently enjoy.

Time Warner told the Associated Press that it would begin placing limits for data sent and received over its cable broadband network in Beaumont. The limits would only be placed on new customers. What’s not clear is if after the test for new customers the limits would be applied to existing customers as well.

The cable company says that it will place limits on its service that vary depending on the plan customers opt for. Service with Internet and video or phone at $29.98 per month would give customers pokey downloads at 768 kbps and have an absolutely shameful per month limit of only 5GB. That means these customers couldn’t watch one single typical HD movie with Apple TV without going over their monthly allotment.

The fastest plan to be offered to new customers will provide downloads of 16 Mbps with a cap of 40GB per month. That cap equates to watching about 6 or 7 HD streamed movies per month. Of course that is assuming you only plan to stream movies from Apple TV or the new Netflix Roku box. The limits even apply to the web pages you surf, emails you send and information you upload.

The penalty for going over the pathetic monthly bandwidth limit is extreme -- $1 per gigabyte. That means Time Warner plans to charge customers who exceed the bandwidth cap a whopping $6-$8 more per HD movie streamed from Apple TV or a similar service.

Time Warner defends its move to bandwidth limits by saying that 5% of the company’s customers use up to half of the available network capacity.

Kevin Leedy, time Warner Cable’s executive vice president of advanced technology told the Associated Press, “We think it's [bandwidth limits] the fairest way to finance the needed investment in the infrastructure.”

Time Warner first announced its plans for the test in early January 2008. To many this sounds like nothing more than an underhanded attempt to squeeze more money out of a subscriber base at the moment that streaming video rentals are starting to take off.

If Time Warner is successful in slipping this plan past its subscribers and other cable providers follow suit, this could be a serious blow to streaming rentals. Then again, this could be just the move that DSL companies have been hoping cable companies make. Let the exodus begin Time Warner customers.

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By Staples on 6/3/2008 12:43:08 PM , Rating: 3
I read that Comcast was thinking of a 250GB cap which I think is reasonable. 40GB is way too low. I download several video podcasts and I break 100GB almost every month. I am sure the pirates will be the loudest complainers about this sytem but I would support it if the cap for standard service was at least 200GB a month and that the service either gets cut or throtles to a really low speed if you go over. I do not want to end up with a huge bill because there was no transparency in this sytem.




By Suntan on 6/3/2008 1:25:52 PM , Rating: 4
When a guy uses words like "I seriously doubt" and "probably" you are supposed to infer that he is guessing, which by deffinition, does not require sources.

In any case, come on, you know he is right, even if you don't want to admit it.

-Suntan


By cobalt42 on 6/3/2008 1:36:15 PM , Rating: 4
Even if he is correct that the top downloaders are not so via legal means, his assertion that Apple TV users are not also victims is incorrect.

At 6GB/movie, you hit a 40GB cap by the 7th movie.
At 1$/GB, each additional movie would cost you $6.


By Oregonian2 on 6/3/2008 1:57:35 PM , Rating: 2
Are these movies HD (need to be in the current climate I think)? If so, what was the fuss with having "only" 30 Gb on a Toshiba HD disk?

One would be over the monthly limit watching just a single Blu-Ray quality streamed movie (that may already be mpeg-4, etc).


By cobalt42 on 6/3/2008 2:08:14 PM , Rating: 2
I've not too familiar with Apple TV, so I'm going on the numbers in the article, but I suspect it's much more highly compressed than what you'd get on a disc.

You're correct, though -- this seems like a move which will effectively quash competition in the video download/streaming sector by making them economically infeasible, since those typically have the highest bandwidth utilization.


By tastyratz on 6/3/2008 6:35:17 PM , Rating: 3
peer to peer and torrent traffic is really the killer of the networks, not single large file downloads from a service such as apple. The limitations are pathetic and would likely cause a serious disruption in a large number of customers service. This is ridiculous. I love how they hide behind this as a way to help improve their infrastructure, this is powered by greed, not the expansion of the network. If they capped everyone what reason would they have to make a faster network anyways? This is no more a method to expand their network for faster services than verizon getting paid for fiber optic rollout in the 90s with the "broadband tax"
http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction...


By Lazarus Dark on 6/3/2008 8:20:02 PM , Rating: 3
That is exactly it. The cable co's are afraid of the internet, they want you to get their 1000 channel packages(of which you watch maybe five channels) and then order their Movies on Demand. As internet video takes off, they see their profits falling rapidly. What's the biggest bandwidth hog? Cable channels, plain and simple. Get rid of half the channels, especially the analog ones, and move fully to doscis 3.0 or better and you've got more bandwidth already in place than we could need in our generation.

I'm about two inches from completely ditching cable as is. The only thing I keep it for is for G4TV. Once G4 has AOTS and X-Play fully available on the net, cable is gone.

I watch lots of full shows on Hulu.com and similar sites, I also have found a site that streams new anime fansubs in HD, but they remove them when it's officially announced the show is coming to America, so as not to offend the copyright owners. This past winter, I watched Terminator:Sarah Connor Chronicles entirely on Fox on Demand at the Fox website. I'm probably up to 300 gig or more a month fully and completely legally. (I don't pirate anything.) Everything else I have Netflix for (and also I just got a Bluray drive.)


By Alexstarfire on 6/4/2008 8:14:50 AM , Rating: 3
Man, G4TV sucks to me. It was much better when they were TechTV. God, they got rid of so much good stuff in the switch. I haven't really even watched it since then either.

Anyways, you are spot on.


By bodar on 6/4/2008 4:45:15 PM , Rating: 2
Exactly. This is all about protecting their government-sponsored monopoly. I live in a suburb 30 min outside of Honolulu, and Time Warner is my only option for broadband. They can do whatever they want as long as they cry "piracy". They could double my rates if they wanted, and my only option is to go back to dial-up.


By Suntan on 6/3/2008 2:40:44 PM , Rating: 1
That’s fine, go ahead. Do you really think it matters to anyone or anything in the universe if YOU are given proof (of something that most people just feel is true) that most of the heavy downloading is done for illegal purposes?

In any case, as was mentioned elsewhere, the ISP doesn’t care if the heavy downloading is legal or not, they just don’t want it on their network.

-Suntan


By Alexstarfire on 6/3/2008 2:50:01 PM , Rating: 5
Given that the entire legal system is based on just cause and evidence, then I'd say it matters a hell of a lot. It may not matter to an individual whether or not there is proof, but as a whole it matters greatly.

Ohh, and of course they don't want heavily downloaders on their network. They'd love to have a bunch of people who do nothing but check email on a $30 768kpbs line, or even better, $100 on an "up to" 16mbps line. That way they get all the money without having to ever upgrade their infrastructure. I'm hoping the community as a whole wises up and realizes that some companies need to be put out of their misery once and for all. They always said you can't teach an old dog new tricks and it looks like this old dog is up to it's usual business.


By Chaser on 6/3/2008 3:18:52 PM , Rating: 2
Good grief. This isn't a trial or an investigation. I think most everyone could agree that many heavy downloaders are using their service to acquire music or movies. But that doesn't necessarily mean they are doing it illegally, although I'm sure its safe to assume some if not many are.


By GlassHouse69 on 6/5/2008 9:03:58 AM , Rating: 1
If you play games, you can download patches of 1-2 gigs a few times a week.

I also play telnet games around the clock. it actually makes up a couple of gigs of info in a month! I would be over the limit never downloading any retarded movies (they look like crap compared to renting them for 4 dollars on disk) and illegal things are illegal, aka, lame.

also, Texas is a really lame fucking state in general.


By rdeegvainl on 6/3/2008 2:52:33 PM , Rating: 2
LOL,
Well as long as it feel true. Alot of the ISP do have a stake in IP infringement as content providers themselves.


By cobalt42 on 6/3/2008 1:29:04 PM , Rating: 4
While you might be right that the top downloaders are likely to be torrenting movies illegally, that doesn't negate the fact that Apple TV users would still be victims. Assuming the 6GB value for one HD movie is accurate, the article is correct in claiming that these legal users will be victims.

Furthermore, you point out yourself that with legal video podcasts you will be hitting these limits yourself. You're a victim in the same way. If the caps weren't so low, neither you nor Apple TV users would be victims.

If the article claimed that only illegal downloaders would be affected, that would be untrue. Again, while it's possible the worst offenders might not be doing everything legal, the actions of Time Warner will certainly be affecting legal users as well.

You seem to actually be in agreement with the article on this point, so I'm not sure why it offends you that they pointed it out.