So should you pay up to $35 for their lowest 5GB plan, you just might be able to actually watch two HD films. Of course you can go over your limit if you’re willing to pay $1 per additional gigabyte, a markup over cost of only 1,000 to 1,500% by Time Warner Cable. That’s a bad deal however you slice it — unless you work in marketing.
The cable companies are very smart when it comes to maximizing their profits. They couldn’t wait for movie downloads to become multi-GB so they could gouge us for wanting to watch more than a couple of movies. I can see Apple (iTunes), Amazon (UnBox), and Netflix all fighting the cable companies on this, as they would all be at risk of losing customers who feel they’d be paying twice for one product.
With a cap like this, it will also be nearly impossible to affordably pirate HD movies, so that whole demographic will be forced to go legit and buy their movies from the retail store. I’m not condoning piracy, simply pointing out that the MPAA has found a new way to curtail movie sharing through the ISP’s caps.
I can see Apple (iTunes), Amazon (UnBox), and Netflix all fighting the cable companies on this…
I suspect that they will instead work out some kind of deal, like iTunes. Business being business, it makes more sense than dragging things out in court for years. (I’m talking here about businesses that provide actual products and services, as opposed to facades for legal teams.)
These stores would probably make a deal with the cable companies where their stuff doesn’t get counted towards your bandwidth quota. That would have the added benefit of discouraging piracy, as bittorrent and the like would fill your quota quite quickly.
Either that, or more likely the cable companies will offer their own PPV-style movie downloads for just a bit less than the competition, with no quota if you buy from them. If for example you prefer Netflix, you not only pay Netflix’s higher purchase price but it also eats your quota. With the current trend in Congress and the White House towards protecting the media companies even at the risk of national security, I can see them getting away with such a racket.
If caps reduce on-line time by the end-user, advertising revenues will fall (less people browsing for less time…). Those counting on advertising revenue (Google, et al) may be up in arms if on-line time decreases.
If on-line time is related to advertising clicks, those counting on those clicks may buy into the ISP market and eliminate the “caps.”
One can only hope that one of the ISPs could create a nice portal (or buy one) so that they could get advertising revenue they do not currently get and leave the cap off…
The issue of whether or not the p2p use is damaging is to note how much SPAM costs companies that have to pay for each kb… If 1% is using 50% of the bandwidth and such use is “illegal,” I say down with the 1%. If the 1% is kids playing counterstrike 24/7, then their use is legal.
Either way, I agree that the available bandwidth can not handle everyone using the “max” bandwidth promised by their ISP…
Edited 2008-07-08 20:03 UTC
It will encourage people to hijack other people’s wifi networks…
And trade warez the old fashioned way…
Buying a pirate movie is still much cheaper than a legit one.
The anti piracy groups often keep going on about how piracy is used to fund organised crime… You can’t say that p2p piracy funds anything, because noone makes any profit from it. But users buying pirate dvds down their local market will put money in someone’s pocket and who knows what they could be using it for.
There was some competition in my area. Comcast will probably pounce on any opportunity to screw me and it’s other customers.
You and me both man, it’s ridiculous how there is literally no choice as far as broadband goes in some areas. I would switch immediately from comcast as they have been the most unhelpful dicks I have ever had the misfortune of dealing with.
True, that. Where I live, I have the luxury of choosing between two cable providers. That competition brings a lower monthly fee than in areas with a single provider, along with free channels, such as the local regional sports network, that would be premium under a single provider.
Which provider am I with? Neither. I’ve got a satellite dish and DSL. This combination is less expensive than comparable service from either of the cable providers.
We had quota connections on the lower end but everybody wanted flatrates and now you get them everywhere and I really hope quota connections will not be coming back ..
.. but we have other things to worry about ( mainly stupid french and british EU proposals etc. )
Edited 2008-07-08 16:14 UTC
Same with BT, I see
We’re paying the equivalent of $30 per month for 8GB allowance.
Then 60 cents per Gb over that.
Sure, it’s ADSL, not Cable, but still, that leaves around 5 mins of SD video per day.
Edited 2008-07-08 17:06 UTC
Welcome to the world which most people live in – New Zealand has tried unsuccessfully all-you-can-eat broadband a grand total of 3 times so far – and each time it has monumentally failed; massive bandwidth usage, little return in term of profit which meant slow upgrading of hardware because of the lack of revenue.
For 99% of people, most never get to download amounts that really abuse the system, so for them, they won’t be affected. The only outcry I see are those who demand that they can hog all the bandwidth, pay a ‘token amount’, then whine when the speed isn’t high end due to overloading by people like them.
only way someone can hog bandwidth from the rest is the users have in total been sold more bandwidth then the setup can actually take.
Sorry, but this mindset it laughable. Unless you’re buying a dedicated link with burstable CIR of some sort what you get is best effort, period. The current infrastructure of the internet doesn’t support every single ISP customer concurrently maxing their pipes out, and frankly probably never will. P2P is really f–king the net up, like it or not.
laughable? hardly. ever heard of fiberoptics?
the problem is that there are more profits to be had selling peak/metered, then it is digging trenches.
Edited 2008-07-08 20:06 UTC
Right. Sorry. I guess all the discussions on NANOG about “How the f–k do we deal with the ever increasing P2P traffic” should be shut down with “DUH! Ever heard of fiberoptics?”
yep, because p2p is just a gigant scapegoat for turning the net into a large interconnected collection of cable tv networks.
sure, you have to pay for traffic going outside the isp’s net, but they will gladly offer you video rentral services, streaming tv servcies and similar that do not count towards your monthly limit…
Isn’t there an alternative to these greedy bastards? I’ve never used the internet outside the U.S. I always hear about the wonderful, cheap internet in Korea. Why can the telcoms and cable operators run everything here?
For more reasons than this, America is going to hell, and I doubt a change in the white house will signifcantly slow the trip south.
usa tries to be as pure capitalist as they can. that is, the market takes care of itself…
That works in most cases, but not when the telecoms and/or the cable companies have monopolies in their markets. This stifles competition and leads to exactly the things we’re seeing here.
heh, i keep forgetting to set the sarcasm tag…
I understand usage caps, and they’re inevitable. Maybe it’s time the bandwidth hogs paid their fair share. But 5GB per month is raping the public. I’m not a gamer or movie downloader myself, but I would probably exceed 5GB every month.
T-W is going to try to ram it down our throats. I’m not sure what we can do, but once that base of 5GB for $35 per month gets established, we’re screwed.
Well, I don’t want to be a telco apologist, but our situation is quite different from South Korea. Not only their infrasturcture is quite recent (because of the Korean War), but the korean telcos have far less area to cover. South Korea isn’t much bigger than Maine, yet there’s about about 1/6th of the american population in that area… No wonder why they got badass Internet.
That said, capping isn’t that bad, as long as the cap makes sense. 5 GB is quite ridiculous. However, I’ve got a 200 GB cap, and it’s definitely more than enough. Enough headroom to do whatever I want, yet prevent people from bandwidth-raping the ISP.
I would think you can tell Time Warner what you want and what you don’t. I don’t want ad content to count against my usage, because someone already paid for it.
I want “rollover gigs”
Rogers is trying this in Canada but the cap is 95 GB on their top two services. A lot better but still brutal when you consider a few things that impact most western countries demographics…
The average household has two or more PCs
The average web page size (overall) is now nearly 400 KB
The average web page size for the most visited sites on the internet is more like 1 MB
People are charged for using their e-mail even though they are already charged for using their e-mail (ISPs that are already setting caps)
All this and MANY more items makes having a household limit of 5 GB ludicrous. And even 95 GB does not seem like very much when you start adding Youtube and BD Spec 2.0 content to the mix.
For $79AUD i was doing 70Gb a month on my 60Gb capped plan. 24mbp/s down 1.5mbp/s up. that ran a webserver fine even with downloads running.
Now i’m on a 50Gb plan for $50AUD 1.5mbp/s up and down, this plan is a ‘just because i need the net’ plan with maybe 30-50Gb downloads a month.
The only complaint i have about Australian broadband is the price. Caps do not affect me beyond having a few days at a reduced speed. Paying extra money on top of your plan for downloads in my opinion is stupid but you have that option if you want.
If i could get the top plan for 50 bucks a month that would be perfect. i don’t need any more or less. a cap does not change the way i use the net in any way.
How about $30 for 1Gb and 18c per Mb (yes, Mb not Gb) over that. That is downloads + uploads.
ouch, it’s not with telstra is it?