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Comments on news posted 2009-04-07 18:25:34: Buried in a Yankee Group write up of last week's Cable Show conference in DC is an interesting nugget from Cablevision. ..

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StudioTech
Off The Air
join:2001-10-10
Edison, NJ

StudioTech

Member

They don't dare at this point

Not with Fios breathing down their neck.

funchords
Hello
MVM
join:2001-03-11
Yarmouth Port, MA

1 recommendation

funchords

MVM

Very nice Juxtaposition

Very nice Juxtaposition to »Time Warner COO: Metered Billing Is What Consumers Want [179] comments
tmc8080
join:2004-04-24
Brooklyn, NY

tmc8080

Member

More people are less stupid in NY Metro..

Whichever provider gives them the best 'bang for the buck' will have a sizeable chunk of the broadband market and will be profitable for future upgrades when they become necessary. What the other 4/5ths of the cable industry is heading for is a showdown with last mile telcos.

Down the line, one of three things will happen:

1. AT&T joins the cable industry in putting hard data bit number caps into it's broadband dsl package (a really stupid, short sighted move) which will move the rest of the industry that way.

2. AT&T gets serious about last mile upgrades and moves into FTTP 50-200mbit with g(X)ons.

3. A political firestorm over non-competitive markets will force some regulatory reforms which say that both last mile providers can't force customers to buy bit capped packages only.

In reality, they should be offering these bit capped deals at a substantial discount to their current unlimited offerings. To do anything else is to say that the cable industry in it's majority view has substantially changed terms of service to protect it's core VIDEO business-- and that's just the way it's going to be.

If AT&T decides to join the party.. maybe congress should revisit the issue of letting Telcos getting into the video business in the first place. As a carrot and stick.. IMO, I would use the VOIP as the bait to keeping the cable companies playing fair with last mile broadband.. you want to play cute.. either you'll be banned from providing VOIP services.. or we'll find a way to tax your business so much it wouldn't be worth billing by the byte (or with hard data caps) anymore.

Cablevision has a long-term perspective.. the rest of the industry is cutting into their broadband market to spite their video coax face.

cdru
Go Colts
MVM
join:2003-05-14
Fort Wayne, IN

cdru to funchords

MVM

to funchords

Re: Very nice Juxtaposition

Well, obviously customers want to confuse themselves. Shesh. Do the marketing drones have to spell everything out for the us.
patcat88
join:2002-04-05
Jamaica, NY

1 recommendation

patcat88

Member

FUD

The Cable Internet is "shared" FUD used to work for me. Then I realized even if my cable 1/6th what is should be, its still faster then DSL.
patcat88

patcat88 to tmc8080

Member

to tmc8080

Re: More people are less stupid in NY Metro..

said by tmc8080:

If AT&T decides to join the party.. maybe congress should revisit the issue of letting Telcos getting into the video business in the first place. As a carrot and stick.. IMO, I would use the VOIP as the bait to keeping the cable companies playing fair with last mile broadband.. you want to play cute.. either you'll be banned from providing VOIP services.. or we'll find a way to tax your business so much it wouldn't be worth billing by the byte (or with hard data caps) anymore.
But deregulation means more free market rights and less civil rights violations for corporations!

Jeff
Connoisseur of leisurely things
Premium Member
join:2002-12-24
GMT -5

1 edit

1 recommendation

Jeff to patcat88

Premium Member

to patcat88

Re: FUD

said by patcat88:

The Cable Internet is "shared" FUD used to work for me. Then I realized even if my cable 1/6th what is should be, its still faster then DSL.
Assuming you're on CV's Boost package with Optimum Online, (30/5), 1/6th of the download would be 5MB and 1/6th of the upload would be about 768kbps - still significantly slower than Fios's 50/5 in this competitive market.

On the more serious side, kudos for CV (and for Verizon) on no "per-byte" billing. For me, per-byte billing is an innovation killer.

funchords
Hello
MVM
join:2001-03-11
Yarmouth Port, MA

funchords to patcat88

MVM

to patcat88
said by patcat88:

The Cable Internet is "shared" FUD used to work for me. Then I realized even if my cable 1/6th what is should be, its still faster then DSL.
Exactamundo. Give consumers the truth. They can handle the truth. No need to pretend cable is fiber. Cable is good enough or better than DSL for most people, no liespretending required.
funchords

1 recommendation

funchords to tmc8080

MVM

to tmc8080

Re: More people are less stupid in NY Metro..

said by tmc8080:

1. AT&T joins the cable industry in putting hard data bit number caps into it's broadband dsl package (a really stupid, short sighted move) which will move the rest of the industry that way.
I've never been an AT&T customer (at least not in this incarnation), but from the outside looking in, it appears that this company has no vision or goals and changes as the wind blows. I've realized that there is a pattern to AT&T.

1. Hear some half-baked idea that consumers will hate.
2. Immediately announce it as something you'll implement within the next year, and then don't.
3. Pretend nobody knows what they're talking about when they ask you later why it never happened, or,
4. Dabble in the dumb idea and then apologize if caught.
5. Wait until the last minute, then,
6. Wait more.

This is management by trial balloon. They go every direction at once resulting in no actual progress.
dynodb
Premium Member
join:2004-04-21
Minneapolis, MN

dynodb

Premium Member

Faster speeds = more caps

The faster broadband speeds get, the more we're going to see caps implemented. Perhaps not the ridiculously low 5GB variety that TW has proposed, but it's only a matter of time before everyone institutes caps.

Back in the days when 640k or 1.5M was the norm, it wasn't so much an issue- even a DS3 could handle quite a few users even with a few "power users".

Start increasing speeds to 20M, 50M or 100M and suddenly even a GigE trunk is at risk of getting congested with enough heavy users.

What we're seeing now is just the beginning. I'm not sure about metered billing, but caps are likely in everyone's future.

StevenB
Premium Member
join:2000-10-27
New York, NY
·Charter

StevenB

Premium Member

Cablevision get's it.

Out of all the major MSO's in this nation, Cablevision, gets the idea of being an industry leader, not a passer-by (Time Warner Cable). They've also brunt the storm and took on major player FIOS and arent bleeding as bad, as people expected. My hats off to them, i still wish i lived in a Cablevision service area.

And i'm not a shareholder or employee!
zed2608
Premium Member
join:2007-09-30
Cleveland, TN

zed2608

Premium Member

id love to live in cablvsion area to

vdiv
Premium Member
join:2002-03-23
Reston, VA

vdiv to StevenB

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to StevenB
me too
Bytezboy
join:2001-05-17
New York, NY

Bytezboy to StevenB

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to StevenB
Don't forget cablevision will cap you upload speed if you upload too much.

RARPSL
join:1999-12-08
Suffern, NY

RARPSL

Member

How True Metered Billing should work

If a company wants to go to metered billing it should be structured in one of two ways:

1) You get a fixed monthly charge (for your connection) and a designed usage charge. IOW: $X/Month and $Y/GB.
2) You get a fixed monthly charge (for your connection) with a designated GB allowance of Y/GB. If you exceed Y GB in a month then you pay an overage charge per GB that is NO MORE than the monthly charge divided by the GB allowance. IOW: You pay $X/Month and get a Y GB allowance. When/If you exceed that allowance the overage MUST be no more than $X/Y per GB.

ALL of the so called "metered" plans are of the second type EXCEPT that they charge an overage fee that is way out of line with the initial charge. A fair plan IMO, should be both plans with the user getting charged the lessor of the two charges (so low usage users get charged for their actual usage). An alternative is having the second plan offer "roll-over" GB as opposed to "Use Them or Lose Them" GBs (with the monthly fee dropping down to a lower tier's usage cap if the account is under used for 3 months until the roll-over minutes are burned off).

RadioDoc

join:2000-05-11
La Grange, IL

RadioDoc to funchords

to funchords

Re: More people are less stupid in NY Metro..

If you are a customer you learn early on to just ignore what they say and wait to see what they actually do. This started with Big Ed shooting his mouth off. What I do know is that I am paying $10 less a month than Comcast wants for the same speed tier, and at the moment there are no restrictions on DSL use unlike what Comcast imposes (no servers, usage caps, etc.).

I don't think they even bother with the balloons. Some AT&T marketing droid farts out some stupid idea and then they all watch the reaction.
doppler
join:2003-03-31
Blue Point, NY

doppler to Bytezboy

Member

to Bytezboy

Re: Cablevision get's it.

said by Bytezboy:

Don't forget cablevision will cap you upload speed if you upload too much.
Pay the extra for boost service, capping is not a problem.
Be cheap about a great service, you get what you deserve.
ace41690
join:2003-01-24
Northfield, CT

ace41690 to Bytezboy

Member

to Bytezboy
This hasnt been reported in forever, they dont cap anymore!

xirian
Premium Member
join:2003-01-26
Beacon, NY

xirian to Bytezboy

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to Bytezboy
not in years
decifal7
join:2007-03-10
Bon Aqua, TN

1 recommendation

decifal7

Member

i like throttleling

I like the idea of throttling people that consume constant large amounts of data to lesser priority on data packets than ones that do not. That way gamers shouldn't be affected due to the fact that games don't really relay that much data to play.. And if your downloading movies/porn/games/whatever, then the throttle won't truely hamper you that much.. Its not like shooting at an enemy and trying to move out before he/she/it retalliates. The download will still finish in very good time and you'll be fine..

Don't get me wrong though.. Someone streamlining a video here and there to me imo shouldn't be throttled.. Just the kiddies that treats their dsl/cable connection like its a dedicated T1 connection just for their excessive doings.. Its not perfect, but it beats the hell outta 5 gig a month caps with 1 gig overages, and your still paying 55 a month to boot!! That's pathetic on bell company's part for using tax dollars to partically fund their network just to turn around and do this sorta thing..

I demand regulation
Mr Matt
join:2008-01-29
Eustis, FL

Mr Matt

Member

ISP's reflect the philosophy of the Greedy Old Pig Party.

I cannot understand why customers will accept a pricing philosophy that does not give the customer a way of determining the amount of data that will be downloaded to their browser when accessing a web site or a detailed description of the amount of data downloaded by each website accessed.

Furthermore companies that bill for usage normally provide the customer with a detailed bill showing when and how the usage took place.

I can download a report from my land line or cellular company with a detail description of the numbers called and the duration of each connection. I am sure that the Cable Television Companies provide each customer with a detailed listing of pay per view programming viewed through their subscriber terminal (Digital Box).

I believe that the reason that the cable television ISP's do not have a system in place to provide detailed usage history to customers, is that it would cost to much to develop such a system. With the history of how the inaccurate the Cable ISP are at providing accurate IP addresses, when served with subpoenas related to piracy issues, how can a customer be sure that the amount of data the ISP claims was downloaded is accurate.

Until some State Attorney General sues the a Cable Company to force them to disclose the source and duration of downloaded data, consumers will continue to be treated like mushrooms and fed bull feces by the CATV ISP's.

Any customer that subscribes to broadband service from a company that imposes or is planning to impose caps has a responsibility to write their public servants and complain about the lack of transparency in these billing systems.

Subaru
1-3-2-4
Premium Member
join:2001-05-31
Greenwich, CT

Subaru to ace41690

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to ace41690

Re: Cablevision get's it.

they don't cap with the non boot service?

AnonDog
@verizon.net

AnonDog

Anon

Billing by the Byte

Billing by the byte only confuses the consumer when the ISP feels like he is going to have to take a hair cut on what he is making by not billing by the byte.

There is exactly *one* fair method of billing. It does not take a rocket scientist to understand that. Don't let them leverage the confusion that flat rate billing has produced into a system whereby they always make more from *YOU* the *AVERAGE* customer than you should have to pay for the service you receive.
iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Austin, TX

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Re: How True Metered Billing should work

Exactly what I was thinking...in fact, if I wre to start an ISP it'd be exactly that way...but that's too smart for the cable and DSL giants...

KrK
Heavy Artillery For The Little Guy
Premium Member
join:2000-01-17
Tulsa, OK

KrK to tmc8080

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to tmc8080

Re: More people are less stupid in NY Metro..

#1 is a given.

#2 could be a long, long way off.

#3 Is iffy, I doubt it will happen, unfortunately.
Joe12345678
join:2003-07-22
Des Plaines, IL

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Member

to iansltx

Re: How True Metered Billing should work

said by iansltx:

Exactly what I was thinking...in fact, if I wre to start an ISP it'd be exactly that way...but that's too smart for the cable and DSL giants...
mod to have throttling with choice of having full speed at a added cost per use over the cap. Also have cap free off peak time.

also have roll over.

Thinkdiff
MVM,
join:2001-08-07
Bronx, NY

Thinkdiff to Subaru

MVM,

to Subaru

Re: Cablevision get's it.

OOL doesn't cap on any tier, at all, and hasn't for at least over a year.

Capt Cap
@sonnet.com

Capt Cap to Mr Matt

Anon

to Mr Matt

Re: ISP's reflect the philosophy of the Greedy Old Pig Party.

Let's force the ISPs to track everything we look at and see, so they can put it on our bills!

Then, our Internet usage can be subpoenaed in court... Americans should demand it!

... Or, maybe we'll just deal with the caps, and let the details be lost in the ether.

M A R S
Premium Member
join:2001-06-15
Long Island

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to Bytezboy

Re: Cablevision get's it.

said by Bytezboy:

Don't forget cablevision will cap you upload speed if you upload too much.
Not true at all..

morbo
Complete Your Transaction
join:2002-01-22
00000

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Member

to RadioDoc

Re: More people are less stupid in NY Metro..

said by RadioDoc:

no servers, usage caps, etc.).
in case you missed the memo, AT&T has mentioned that they are considering caps for the internet services.
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