Time Warner to begin internet billing based on usage in SA (updated title) (Beaumont: rental, costs)

[sapphire]

Originally Posted by Blue Dog

Sorry, sapphire but I heard that AT&T wanted to limit the internet too!

Yeah, I'm sure if it's an industry thing, there won't be anyone who isn't limiting it. Thanks for passing on the rumor!!

[slaleman]

Originally Posted by PopsGuysRule

Well, I will have to start looking for another job then....
I am on the internet all day long every day. I am an independent contractor and work from home....

I can't pay rates for a full day of internet use....
I often work into the night and frequently on weekends....

This is my sole means of support... What do they expect people like me to do?????

I'm serious and looking for a serious answer.... I am one of hundreds on the roster for two major clients... I would think that all the others out there will be faced with the same dilemma, so there surely must be some way out of it for us.....

You may be on the 'net all day, but unless you're downloading tons of music/video files, or getting huge (and I mean frickn' HUGE) attachments from clients, I doubt you'll go over.

250 Gigs a month is an awful lot of stuff...just for comparison, I checked my work email account, where I have unlimited storage (one of the perks of being an admin) and I have just under 1 gig of 'stuff' stored in my email. That includes all of the email and related attachments I've gotten over the past year. OK, so you get more stuff than I do? Our communications director who sends out all kinds of press releases, photos, etc, has just under 2 gigs in her mail (received and sent).

Every piece of music I own still totals under 10 gigs, and I've got 3 1/2 days of music on my ipod....that's almost 1400 items. Every FULL SIZED photo I've taken over the past 6-7 years (that's over 10,000 photos, by the way) only totals 23 gigs. Add all of that up, and I'm still under 100 gigs.

Simply surfing websites and checking email isn't going to put you over 1/4 terrabyte in a month. You have to be doing some serious downloading of pretty hefty files.

[sinsativ]

I believe most people are misunderstanding the difference between downloading and simply accessing, or viewing.

[The Man in SATX]

Originally Posted by wCat

No they won't. The Competition will jump on the bandwagon and compete WITH them. This is a serious situation and well definitely present a huge disadvantage to those that cannot afford purchasing huge amounts of bandwidth.

Time Warner is priming the market place. They used to offer modems with 4 wireless connections per household. Now they offer homeowners a business class service to 10 wireless connections at no extra charge! Why do you suppose that is? The more computers out there....and the more UTube, huge files being transferred, videos and music...it all uses more bandwidth. We get lulled into "needing" it and liking the easy availability.....then wham....either lose it or pay for it! Mom and pops and independent contractors who rely heavily on computers for work will be seriously effected by the outrageous fees that will be required to continue business as usual.

This will definitely weed out or limit the little guy.....personal use or small businesses.

People need to be educated about how it will effect them. It's bad enough gas is so high, and internet services are now part of "normal" utilities and climbing....cost of living is about to get much more expensive when this takes place. It's a economic nightmare.

Check with the FCC and your state and federal regulators to see what needs to be done to protest this before it happens.

I agree on this... everyone will be doing the same thing.. look at the airlines... one starts charging for bags.. and pretty soon all of em are on board... I am in the belief that all of the internet companies will soon be charging pay for play... meaning .. if you are on the internet for 2 hours and use x amount of bandwith.. your gonna pay x amount of cash..

I guess we are all going to have to get a life and go outside... hmm.. i was beginning to wonder what the sun looked like.. maybe this is the time to go look at it!

[sapphire]

Originally Posted by The Man in SATX

I guess we are all going to have to get a life and go outside... hmm.. at it!

I think most of us "have a life"--if you don't then yes, you probably need to get one. Having internet and having a life are not mutually exclusive of one another. As some of the previous posters mentioned, they actually make their living via the internet--that is who will suffer the most if this catches on.

[The Man in SATX]

Originally Posted by sapphire

I think most of us "have a life"--if you don't then yes, you probably need to get one. Having internet and having a life are not mutually exclusive of one another. As some of the previous posters mentioned, they actually make their living via the internet--that is who will suffer the most if this catches on.

I actually do have a life.. I do not live on the internet... my point is.. there are those that do not and will make a change in the habits they currently have.. But actually that is not the point of my post.. my point is.. everyone that delivers internet will go to this new format... pay for play.. I do not believe the word if will even be part of the equation.. its when it catches on..

[sapphire]

Chill, I didn't mean YOU personally, I meant the collective you. But yeah, there's probably not an IF, it's a when, which sucks for all of us, life or no life.

[tekka-maki]

If [Comcast] weather the storm, I'm afraid this trend will affect all providers in this country. We'll probably see something like, 'unlimited acct', similar to most quasi unlmited (but not really unlmited) cell phone data plans that will pop up for more.

It's really backwards thinking at it's best. Rather than improving their infrastructure; making it FASTER; and spending all that subsidy money, Comcast is just taking a step backward.

I can live with 250GB easily, but Time Warner has been talking about caps MUCH smaller than that. Once that happens, I would personally switch to Earthlink as I don't like ATT price points vs. speed tiers at all.

It's a sorry state of affairs for net neutrality. I feel like this is just the precursor

[traficdogn]

Originally Posted by tekka-maki

It's really backwards thinking at it's best. Rather than improving their infrastructure; making it FASTER; and spending all that subsidy money, Comcast is just taking a step backward.

I can live with 250GB easily, but Time Warner has been talking about caps MUCH smaller than that. Once that happens, I would personally switch to Earthlink as I don't like ATT price points vs. speed tiers at all.

No its not backwards thinking.

In college I had a t-3 supported network. We were getting internet at rediculous/unthrottled speeds. The only way the campus was able to provide us with this speed, was through a capped data quota.

The campus was charged on a per byte basis. To maintain costs, they
only had two choices. 1) Throttle bandwith (the way all the american isp's do right now. or 2) Give people ultra fast internet with capped quotas.

So hypothetically speaking,

it costs ISP X the same price to provides the service to download 500-gigabytes a month.

Do you want...

a)To have throttled internet, so it takes you 30 days to download 500 gigs.
b) Have capped internet, so it takes you 3 days to downloading 500 gigs.

[cwh]

Originally Posted by tekka-maki

If [Comcast] weather the storm, I'm afraid this trend will affect all providers in this country. We'll probably see something like, 'unlimited acct', similar to most quasi unlmited (but not really unlmited) cell phone data plans that will pop up for more.

It's really backwards thinking at it's best. Rather than improving their infrastructure; making it FASTER; and spending all that subsidy money, Comcast is just taking a step backward.

I can live with 250GB easily, but Time Warner has been talking about caps MUCH smaller than that. Once that happens, I would personally switch to Earthlink as I don't like ATT price points vs. speed tiers at all.

It's a sorry state of affairs for net neutrality. I feel like this is just the precursor

Actually caps have nothing to do with net neutrality. This is an issue of billing, not content delivery. Even with caps, you will be able to download whatever you want, you may just have to pay more for it.

I will agree that 40 gig cap that TW is trialing is on the low side, but according to them, most of their customers will easily fall under that cap.