BF69
join:2004-07-28
Camden, TN
| reply to Plattsburgh NY
Re: So Charter is going to go to metered service huh?
said by Plattsburgh NY :
After years of Charter rate increases and the promise of better service only to still have nothing new, this takes the cake. I still only have 3 meg service and no telephone in my area.
I though everyone was moved to 5 meg already? |
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haplo2112
join:2003-05-12
Charlton, MA
| reply to BF69
I find this information disturbing...!
Charter things are bad enough, don't go screwing around with bandwidth policies.
Another Article along the same lines.
»arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20···aps.html |
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matt314159
join:2006-01-18
Hesperia, CA
 ·Charter Pipeline
| reply to BF69
Re: So Charter is going to go to metered service huh?
You know, as an alternative, I might even be okay with some sort of policy that gave me the option to choose unlimited bandwidth usage per month, in trade for speed caps that were in place during the day and removed at night.
For isntance, if they offered a package that capped me at 5mb down / 1mb up during the day, but then, say, after 9 or 10pm, to 7am uncapped, or raised the cap, to 20mb/2mb, etc, I could deal with that.
It would help with the legitimate problem of load balancing their network capacity during peak hours, and allow heavy downloaders some breathing room at night.
I'd go so far as to say I'd pay an addiitonal monthly fee for a nightly "speedbost". Doesnt Optimum online in NY do that? |
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Lazlow
join:2006-08-07
Saint Louis, MO
1 edit | reply to BF69
Lets run some quick numbers. Lets assume that the average customer has 5meg service @$60/month and that 95% of the customers would be in the less than 5GB tier. A nuumber of posters have stated that they think that the cable companies will drop rates for the sub 5GB tier. So lets take a look. Just for ease of numbers lets assume that there are one hundred customers.
100 X $60 = $6000/month (now)
95 X $45 (a guess) = $4275/month
($6000-$4275) / 5 =$345/month for each customer in the 5% over 5GB/month.
I do not believe that for $15/month reduction most people will be happy (I could be wrong) for this lower service (even if they do not currently use it). Even if I am wrong on that, there is no way a significant number of th 5% customers will be willing to pay the $345/month for 40GB of download. These people will either drop down into the sub 5GB tier or will leave the cable company. Either way the cable company will loose money.
Basically this means that if they do install the caps they will not be able to afford to offer any significant discount from the current service rate. |
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dks7
join:2004-05-31
| If they go to a capped model I will change providers regardless of what the caps are. I believe technology should go forward, and if ISP's go backwards then they should be government controlled. I want my service and don't really care who controls it as long as I get what I want. |
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useless
join:2006-07-16
1 edit | reply to Lazlow
said by Lazlow  :Lets run some quick numbers. Lets assume that the average customer has 5meg service @$60/month and that 95% of the customers would be in the less than 5GB tier. A nuumber of posters have stated that they think that the cable companies will drop rates for the sub 5GB tier. So lets take a look. Just for ease of numbers lets assume that there are one hundred customers. 100 X $60 = $6000/month (now) 95 X $45 (a guess) = $4275/month ($6000-$4275) / 5 =$345/month for each customer in the 5% over 5GB/month. I do not believe that for $15/month reduction most people will be happy (I could be wrong) for this lower service (even if they do not currently use it). Even if I am wrong on that, there is no way a significant number of th 5% customers will be willing to pay the $345/month for 40GB of download. These people will either drop down into the sub 5GB tier or will leave the cable company. Either way the cable company will loose money. Basically this means that if they do install the caps they will not be able to afford to offer any significant discount from the current service rate. I dont think that math is a good way to understand the problem.
You have 100 people using x bandwidth on average.
You have 95 of those people using 5 % of the bandwidth.
You have 5 people using the other 95%
You are currently making 100 x $60 => 6000
You currently spend $z on bandwidth.
2 scenarios:
Charter spends less on bandwidth, also makes less, and doesnt have as many RIAA/MPAA complaints, and pisses off a small customer base while making it better for the rest.
Some of your high bandwidth users would stay
or
Press for it is terrible, such as the comcast bittorrent thing. policy sucks so bad, as predicted on the internet, and it never happens. |
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Lazlow
join:2006-08-07
Saint Louis, MO
| Useless
We all know that the cable companies buy a X number of pipes at price $y. Assuming you eliminate the %5 high bandwidth users(or drop there usage), there will be a reduction in the bandwidth load, and thus charter will save money. But what happens next? Charter will reduce X (the number of pipes) and the 95% of the customers they still have, will still see the same service level(speed, lag, whatever you want to call it). |
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useless
join:2006-07-16
| »arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20···aps.html
Well that is the thing that the scenarios describe.
If charter improves user experience for 95% of users, they stand to gain.
Also consider, in America, there are not normally more than 2 viable internet options. So you have Cable and DSL.
If they both do it together? This is a possible scenario as well. In the last post I noted that Charter is likely waiting for comcast to sort some things out. Dont think charter is the only one waiting.
People also accept speed limits on the roads they pay for.
Governors on the cars they buy.
Minute limits on cell phones.
Unfortunately it is a model that is in practice all over...
(Again, I hope it doesnt come to that ) |
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DA
join:2002-04-13
Greenville, SC
·Charter Pipeline
 ·ViaTalk
| reply to useless
An even better way to look at it would be this how much are two OC-3 which is what I think is feeding at least the Upstate of SC?
I think the two fractional OC-3's we purchased at the company I work for in the upstate was ~$9000 each per month. So maybe $18k each per month? I will ask tomorrow to be sure.
So I return to my statement that bandwidth is probably less than things like line maintenance, tech support, etc...
Some general numbers:
Outsourced tech support generally runs around $7-14 per call depending on location.
A mid-sized truck lease maybe $900 a month (complete guess here..) and they maybe have 20 trucks here?
A single employee is probably $32k including benefits...
So why are they focusing on bandwidth? Is it because the cost of maintaining the gear at each head-end to maintain the bandwidth in that area and it isn't the upstream bandwidth? |
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Lazlow
join:2006-08-07
Saint Louis, MO
| reply to useless
Useless
You are far smarter than this.
As I explained above the users experience WILL NOT improve. Once charter(or whoever) has this in place (lower load on their system) they will drop the number of outgoing pipes. Thus the users experience will remain relatively the same.
Both (or all) doing it together is a real fear.
There are speed limits on highways which equates to internet speed (5meg plan, 10meg plan, 16 meg plan) but there are no limits as to how much you can use a highway.
Governors on cars is the exact same as having a X-meg plan. You are limited to how fast but not how far or how much you use it.
Even the cell phone market is going away from metered billing. Most plans now have free nights(nights start earlier now than ever before) and weekends. Some plans now have free incoming calls. When cell phones first came out they charged for every minute you talked. On top of that there prices are dropping. I have a better plan now than a few years ago and it cost me less. |
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useless
join:2006-07-16
| We may have to agree to disagree.
As Sikmaz pointed out there are other costs. You have to understand what infrastructure was in place prior to internet, what was reused, etc. So pointing to trucks and such isnt really as relevant, as there were trucks and techs before there was internet. Same for VoIP. VOD, etc. You have to be able to distinguish the added cost of each service, charter is able to do that ( I assure you )
I was attempting to give you a more accurate idea of the numbers that would factor into the decision.
You can probably , to be more accurate, take the 95% and make it 99.5%, and reduce 5% to .5%
I also know that in some areas, not all, there are a few who's users who impact the usage of others. As sikmaz also pointed out, you cannot strictly look at bandwidth, as other things such as hardware.
Again, I direct to things such as the sandvine website...such things would not exist if there wasn't a market for them.
Nevertheless, the entire situation has been oversimplified here, which can be a bit distorting. |
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Lazlow
join:2006-08-07
Saint Louis, MO
1 edit | reply to BF69
Lets try this from another angle. The basic premise of this is that the bandwidth costs the ISPs too much money. While I cannot find a solid reference to it, it is widely quoted that the price the ISPs are charged is $.02-$.10/GB. In an attempt to verify this I looked at what a web hosting company charges (best I could come up with):
»www.inmotionhosting.com/hostingplans.html
$6.95 for 15,000GB/month
$8.95 for 30,000GB/month
$18.95 for 45,000GB/month
They are also providing other services on each tier (see link).
So the price of the actual bandwidth cannot be all that high or these guys would not be charging so little. Which leads me to conclude that it is not the bandwidth (internet backbone) that is the source of the expense but the individual companies equipment.
But that does not make sense either. If the equipment was the issue, then other countries (Japan, Korea, etc) could not be offering symmetrical 20/20 connections for $25 per month. We have heard that the cable companies have to spend so much money on new equipment to support the increase bandwidth being used. This growth should be reasonably consistent within countries that are of similar industrialized levels. A $9,000 router here should be a $9,000 router there as well. So why is a 5/512 connection here $60 and a 20/20 connection there $25? |
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rradina
join:2000-08-08
Chesterfield, MO
| As we've heard many times, cable is a shared infrastructure. I know, I know...at some point, we all share but perhaps cable relies on more sharing than DSL and FIOS. This isn't necessarily a problem because if it's well managed (the right level of sharing), there should always be plenty of on-demand bandwidth for all. Given what I just said, the equipment charges might be related to splitting nodes (i.e. part of managing how much of the infrastructure is shared) and, potentially, running fiber deeper into their hybrid fiber/coax (HFC) plant to support the node splits.
All I'm saying is these costs could be real. In some respects perhaps this is cable's plan. Continue to offer greater speeds so they can raise prices or keep prices the same thereby funding the continued build out of their plant.
If they didn't do this, perhaps we would all be complaining about how vanilla, slow and cheap our cable service is. |
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Lazlow
join:2006-08-07
Saint Louis, MO | rradina
The does make some sense but Japan also has cable internet. If that was the source of the problem wouldn't it effect them too? |
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jarablue
Always be true to yourself
join:2001-06-11
Worcester, MA
1 edit | reply to BF69
Take what we give you and shut up. Then in 4-5 years when we shutdown you'll breathe a sigh of relief because you will be rid of our shitty service.
God what a crock of shit.
Yeah yeah yeah same stuff. Charter put ITSELF in debt..nobody else. Not the debt gremlin. Charter did it to themselves. And all along we're gonna pay for it. |
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rradina
join:2000-08-08
Chesterfield, MO
| reply to Lazlow
I have read that Japan's government provides substantial subsidies for technology infrastructure. If so, it may muddy the water.
I just don't know enough about the landscape in Japan to know whether this is a fair comparison.
And before someone is offended, I'm certainly not suggesting our market is more or less free than Japan. The US certainly has its fair share of corporate welfare. Just search for my account and USF and you'll get the idea. |
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rradina
join:2000-08-08
Chesterfield, MO
| reply to Lazlow
Another thing to consider is Japan's land area. It's ~145,000 square miles. California is 163,000 square miles. Japan's population is ~125 million. California's population is ~37 million. Consider California with four times as many people. With that kind of density, any infrastructure that's created will have higher potential utilization which means more profit.
Again, this probably muddies the water making direct comparisons less valuable. |
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Lazlow
join:2006-08-07
Saint Louis, MO
| The population density is very similar if you look at the east coast. The US government also subsidized to the tune of 200billion in 1996, so I do not really think that applies.
If the problem really is equipment (as suggested above) and each piece of equipment supports X amount of load, doesn't the density issue really drop out? I mean if you have X amount of equipment at density A wouldn't you need 2X the equipment if the density doubled(2A)? |
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Plattsburgh NY
@charter.com | reply to BF69
We should have been too. Even the reps at the 800 number are surprised when they see I can still only get 3Meg in my town. |
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MEuseless2
@charter.com
| reply to useless
said by useless :Nevertheless, the entire situation has been oversimplified here, which can be a bit distorting. You've made great points, in this post and your others, but I'd save my breath if I were you. Some people around here just don't want to use logic. You're arguing with people who oversee office sized networks. Save your breath man. It's not worth the headache. |
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