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Comments on news posted 2009-04-24 13:02:36: After this month's public backlash, it has become clear that if carriers are going to force metered billing upon their customers, they're going to have to do it en masse, to ensure that consumers don't have a competitive alternative. ..
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 tmc8080
join:2004-04-24
Floral Park, NY
| what this means Telco had a captive business for broadband for quite a while.. though it was commercial ISDN & DSL to business customers. They never really wanted to get into the residenial broadband market for precisely the reasons cable companies today are dealing with-- increased consumption of bandwidth & 3rd party competitors to VOICE & VIDEO. The lure of course was to let telco into the video business which at the time was very lucrative and expanding.
The cable industry quietly sees their content increasingly going online around the web & p2p circuit without any effective way to deal with it. Along comes metered billing & bit cap inventions. This is clearly a warning shot in the ISP industry-- the majority of subscribers are on a CABLEMODEM service as opposed to a telco service (telco let their technology upgrades wither on the vine while sticking to ISDN & DSL networks for far too long). This means that as long as there isn't a viable alternative, your cable company (with few and farbetween exceptions) is trying to limit your consumption of bandwidth, particularly video content, however discrimination of types of content sparks net neutrality problems for the industry & privacy issues.
There are also the issues of market share, pricing & your competition's reaction. If telcos decide not to cap, they stand to gain plenty of market share-- if they go along with caps.. it will be seen as market collusion:
Collusion is an agreement, usually secretive, which occurs between two or more persons to deceive, mislead, or defraud others of their legal rights, or to obtain an objective forbidden by law typically involving fraud or gaining an unfair advantage. It is an agreement among firms to divide the market, set prices, or limit production. [1] It can involve "wage fixing, kickbacks, or misrepresenting the independence of the relationship between the colluding parties."[2] All acts affected by collusion are considered void.[3]
After all, for the time being it seems where the OIL industry goes.. others will likely be tempted to follow until we have energy diversity & independence from foreign soruces.
Keep in mind, you have the right to cancel service from a provider (cable or telco) who chooses to have an unfair advantage in the terms of service. As further punishment, you can take your video & voice & wireless subscriptions away from them too if your in a dual/triple/quad play. | |
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duder
@rr.com | horse shit Metered Billing is horse shit want people to stay no Metered Billing fios fios fios will be every where what then oops sorry about that Metered Billing thing ........... aaaaaaaa ok | |
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ispgeek
Premium
join:2006-02-16
Saint Petersburg, FL
| Silly Karl... As usual Karl loves to rant on and on about his favorite company (for those of us less read...that would be Verizon) and as usual he goes on and on about how Verizon is setting the pace for the industry...yawn.
What he fails to say about Verizon is that they pretty much suck around the country in every category that a consumer would consider important in any service relationship.
Rather than go on and on (like Karl) I'm gonna make it simple and give ya the straight facts. Facts are that in almost every region around the country that Verizon serves they have big problems. Simply stated...their customers hate them, their business practices are seriously in question and most consumer watchdogs don't just say walk away from Verizon...they say RUN!
Let's use one such organization that's been around for a very long time and is pretty much respected by all.
Since I can easily produce the results from my state...here goes...
The Better Business Bureau rates all kinds of companies based on consumer feedback, complaints, business practices etc... Here are the ratings for Verizon...
Verizon Telephone - Tampa Florida - All Regions
Rating - F
»www.bbb.org/west-florida/busines···-1004452
Verizon Online - Tampa Florida - All Regions
Rating - F
»www.bbb.org/west-florida/busines···18002356
So that before anyone goes out thinking that Verizon is out to save the world and the consumer at large read those reports and get the facts. Verizon (and Karl) only care about Verizon... that's it. They could care less about a competitive marketplace just so that the marketplace favors them.
Oh and Karl...
"So keep an eye on Verizon. As Verizon's thinking goes, so goes the entire market."
Now that's funny! All I have to say is you better hope not... | |
| albundyhere
join:2000-10-26
New York, NY
| yet TWC's incompetence continues... "A press release from the company this week proclaims that "unlike some cable providers, Verizon doesn't penalize subscribers for using all the speed they need." They've also previously hinted that meters are a symptom of inadequate cable networks."
wow, that just says it all! Complete, pure and utter incompetence on time warner cable's behalf. unbelievable, you actually get what you pay for with verizon! i guess TWC has alot to learn about business. Time to fire en-mass those idiot execs that put this through...
if the metered billing did go through, it would be the end of ALL video streaming sites, including Hulu, youtube, etc. In fact, it would probably force everyone to go back to dialup. Eventually TWC would get even more greedy and turn the pay-by-GB to pay-by-MB and so on.
To end my rant, all i have to say is that TWC currently steals from subscribers by massively overselling their nodes and not maintaining their infrastructure. The metered billing thing was just a nail in their coffin. | |
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