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Time Warner Cable vs AT&T Uverse vs Satellite

monsoon

By monsoon
in Charlotte Coffee House

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monsoon Gigalopolis

monsoon

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Seems that I can't find the old topic so I will start another one on these lines.

Sounds as if you guys on TWC are going to get your subscriber agreements changed so they can make metered internet legally binding. If they do it or not is another matter, but this cable company seems hell bent on charging you for each byte of data that comes down the wires. See this article. At least in my neighborhood, AT&T provides a very nice alternative and I see they are back adding in the U-verse boxes.

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JayGee Hamlet

JayGee

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I'll probably get flamed for this, but I'm not totally opposed to some type of usage limits/fees for broadband. You can't use as much electricity, gas or water in your house as you want either. You can argue that your ISP doesn't have cost associated with creating the content, they just deliver it, which is true, but then CharMeck Utilities don't make water either, they just treat it and deliver it. Google 'internet capacity' and read the doomsday stories. It is fundamentally unfair for some users to continuously suck up bandwidth at the expense of others and not have to pay for it. It's not bad now, but it will be in a few years. The extra $$ have to go toward increasing capacity. If some guy down the street turned on his mega-machine and made my lights dim just because he could do it at no extra cost, I'd be pissed.

Ok, that said the above is the only thing I will say in their defense. How they are going about it is a sleazy, underhanded tactic that should be fully publicized so customers are fully aware of what they are doing, since obviously they don't have the balls to just come out and announce it. Hate to say it, but this is a classic case of the need for regulation. If this wasn't a monopoly, or duopoly, it wouldn't be necessary. But it is. Cable/internet should be a utility and regulated as one, because of the lack of competition. And their ability to raise rates should be tied back to their customer service, which in TWC's case, is horrible.

Where do I see it in my T&C that says I have the right to deduct x from my bill for every time I have to reboot my dvr because the screen turned orange (or pink or gray). Or I switch to one of the great new HD channels and it says it's 'not available right now, please try again later'.

And I like the way they 'conveniently forgot' to deduct for my price lock a few months ago.

BTW, I understand AT&T is 'experimenting' with cap&tier also.

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monsoon Gigalopolis

monsoon

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I am not sure that I agree with your analogy as water, gas and electricity actually consume physical material that is fairly expensive to supply. Water has to be pumped, sanitized and sent into the delivery system. And it tends to be dependent upon the weather. Gas and electricity have the same issues. It's not clear to me that is the same as increasing use of bandwidth on a cable. The cable costs the same whether you use it or not, but in the case of the above there is a direct relationship between usage and consumption. Sure, they have to invest in infrastructure to handle the bandwidth, but that should be covered in the monthly fee they charge. Would they be willing to let you do like CMUD, for example, and reduce your monthly charge to almost $0 if you don't use the internet, like water?

While we are talking about that, they are unwilling to let you purchase just the channels you watch. They want to charge you a flat fee for a "tier". Seems like they want to have their cake and eat it too.

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Neo City

Neo

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I am a high bandwidth user at home. I pay for TWC's 'Turbo' Road Runner which is $55/mo if you're a TWC customer, which I am. I monitor my bandwidth usage and it is always well over 100GB/month which means under this planned cap, my Internet bill would more than double to keep my current usage. Even though we pay for digital cable (which alone isn't cheap), we watch quite a bit of a content on the net from places like Netflix and Hulu. Not to mention that I am very much into photography and my wife is into video (1080p takes up an amazing amount of space). We use an off-site backup service which accounts for a lot of our bandwidth usage each month. Oh, and let's not forget that I'm a Vonage customer so our telephone system gets included with the bandwidth totals.

Have I recommended TWC up until now? Yes, but since they threatened our neighbors up the road with the cap (Greensboro), I have been seriously considering switching ALL of my business elsewhere (i.e. DirecTV and another ISP that doesn't cap service). Want to alienate your customers? Nickel and Dime them with caps and tiers and you'll most definitely lose your best customers.

Users were furious when Comcast placed caps on their customers, but their cap is 250GB vs. TWC's 40GB cap for their top tier. I've read where TWC would introduce a 100GB tier, but the price would be MUCH more than what I'm currently paying. Shouldn't bandwidth get cheaper instead of more expensive? At least that's what happens in most other developed countries.

Why should I pay the same price as a Comcast customer, but get only 16% of the bandwidth that they get each month? The government needs to act on this before it gets out of control.

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JerseyBoy Burg

JerseyBoy

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I am a high bandwidth user at home. I pay for TWC's 'Turbo' Road Runner which is $55/mo if you're a TWC customer, which I am. I monitor my bandwidth usage and it is always well over 100GB/month which means under this planned cap, my Internet bill would more than double to keep my current usage. Even though we pay for digital cable (which alone isn't cheap), we watch quite a bit of a content on the net from places like Netflix and Hulu. Not to mention that I am very much into photography and my wife is into video (1080p takes up an amazing amount of space). We use an off-site backup service which accounts for a lot of our bandwidth usage each month. Oh, and let's not forget that I'm a Vonage customer so our telephone system gets included with the bandwidth totals.

Have I recommended TWC up until now? Yes, but since they threatened our neighbors up the road with the cap (Greensboro), I have been seriously considering switching ALL of my business elsewhere (i.e. DirecTV and another ISP that doesn't cap service). Want to alienate your customers? Nickel and Dime them with caps and tiers and you'll most definitely lose your best customers.

Users were furious when Comcast placed caps on their customers, but their cap is 250GB vs. TWC's 40GB cap for their top tier. I've read where TWC would introduce a 100GB tier, but the price would be MUCH more than what I'm currently paying. Shouldn't bandwidth get cheaper instead of more expensive? At least that's what happens in most other developed countries.

Why should I pay the same price as a Comcast customer, but get only 16% of the bandwidth that they get each month? The government needs to act on this before it gets out of control.

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nonillogical Burg

nonillogical

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someone told me this was already shot down, but i guess not?

even though we don't have many alternatives here, it would seem like this act would convince a ton of TWC customers to instantly switch (i would pay my termination fee in a heartbeat to do so, even if just on-principle). it's generated so much vehemently negative press already, even as sneaky as they are trying to be about it.

i'm a very high bandwidth user, and while most of it is purely recreational, i have to upload enough massive photoshop files that i would probably be bumped into one of the higher tiers for that use alone. this would be really bad news for people who have to do a lot of file-sharing for work.

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JayGee Hamlet

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someone told me this was already shot down, but i guess not?

even though we don't have many alternatives here, it would seem like this act would convince a ton of TWC customers to instantly switch (i would pay my termination fee in a heartbeat to do so, even if just on-principle). it's generated so much vehemently negative press already, even as sneaky as they are trying to be about it.

i'm a very high bandwidth user, and while most of it is purely recreational, i have to upload enough massive photoshop files that i would probably be bumped into one of the higher tiers for that use alone. this would be really bad news for people who have to do a lot of file-sharing for work.

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