Time Warner Cable Will Increase Caps > better be by a lot.

reply to BF69

Re: better be by a lot.

reply to fiberguy
Fiberguy

I am right there with you on doing something about people who are dragging down the node during high volume times and ignoring users who download heavily during non peak hours (11om-8am?). Punish the ones who are actually causing the customer's issues and not just everybody who downloads a lot.

I do believe that this entire thing is about protecting their video business.

I think there is more than one thing going on. Are they wanting to protect their business model? sure! Is it a perfect model? Hell no... not in the least. I posted about quality and quantity and I mean it. They want more money from less customers instead of putting a product out there that more will buy at a lessor price giving them more money.. but I digress.

However, I've also long called for the end of caps, period. What I DO advocate, and think is the best method is to throttle customer back on over all speed for a period of time, during peak, if they are utilizing too much at any given time. (ie: if they have the 16mb tier and are abusing the network, cut them back to 1.5 or 3mb for a period of time until the node slows down. You're not impacting anything major to the end user anyway.

I also believe that demand is out growing the capacity expansion on the last mile. Comcast and TWC have been on a buying spree. They just ate up Adelphia, as we know. Many of those systems were neglected. There are also other systems they've purchased that were neglected. (There is a reason why so many were never upgraded, becuase smaller companies can't afford to upgrade them. They'd have to charge too much and satellite was a sure competitor for them which forced their rates down. To be honest, getting purchased by a big boy shows WHY the strength in side mattered here.)

Everyone SHOULD know that you can't just turn on a dime and upgrade a network. I think two or three years for a complete rebuild, which is an AGGRESSIVE rebuild effort, is reasonable in time. However, it's much easier for someone like Amazon, for example, to simply throw in some servers, connect to the net, and start serving up bandwidth intensive content. Like I said, it takes YEARS to rebuild a plant to handle it.

So, personally, I think there are far more things going on at one time. Meanwhile, the consumer is quickly finding more and more and more to throw at their connection, want more now, and get antsy when they don't get it. It's amazing how 2 years can feel like an eternity when you're waiting for something. Add in a horribly down economy and money issues affecting everyone, and you have network management taking the front page. Just as it's easy for an i-net provider to throw up a video service in a matter of a few months, it's easy for Comcast to implement controls to compete in the race.

Things are going to improve.. and I think we'll see a reduction in caps over time.. but right now, people want definition.. they got it.

reply to atigerman
They say 1gig? are they ma'ad? Personally, the 5gb is true for many casual users.. but, casual has gone to the past. 5gb will become 10, then 40, 80.. and so on. Personally, in one data back up, 1 gig is gone.

I consider myself on the high end of heavy users. There are 4 people in the house and I won't even begin to say how many computers I have hooked up. (And my servers run on DSL, not cable) .. but I think we're using about 60 gig a month. I don't need to download distro's over and over all the time and I don't download movies.. not at this time.

reply to fiberguy
Fiberguy

I agree that it takes time to rebuild a network. BUT it is not like no one knew the direction and speed that this was headed. It was obvious (to most countries) where we were headed years ago. Rather than reinvesting a significant amount in their infrastructure, the companies spent the money on bonuses and dividends.

While I am not a fan of throttling, it would be better(only during peak loads) than any cap.

The demand outgrowing last mile capacity MIGHT be explained as you describe on those systems that have been purchased in the last few years, but that does not explain why the rest of the systems are in the same boat.

Well, what DOES explain it is the technology not being available.

You have to take into consideration to be cost effective. I don't agree with any business that spends what ever it takes to upgrade, just to upgrade.

Prior to DOCSIS 3.0 you had:

Node splits: Expensive and often un-necessary not giving you more speed.

Docsis 1.1 to 2.0 upgrades. This doesn't give you MUCH more speed and, with 3.0 on the horizon, and now coming out, why invest that much money into a stop-gap measure just to upgrade? It makes no economic sense. If I were a share holder and they pulled that, I'd yank my stock.

Fiber?: Very expensive and it's not cables business. Also, it is a very expensive rebuild for cable.. in fact, a VERY expensive rebuild meaning they'd likely have to not only rebuild the entire last mile, they'd also have to invest in ONTs for every home served.. not cost effective with new technology on the horizon.

So, there are many other considerations that have to be taken into consideration.

Some people want to make this into something trivial, and I'm not saying you are.. however, these are just SOME of the things that are not taken into consideration when thinking it's a simple upgrade, still.

It's not accurate to think that they are not thinking about faster speeds and more capacity (Which is the real issue - capacity) but, they've been working towards getting to the 100+ speeds since back in 2000 that I can remember. The problem is getting to that point.

You are forgetting that other countries have cable too and they have had these speeds and capacity for a while. I agree with you that splitting the nodes would not have given them much of a speed increase but it would have given them a capacity increase (which is the real issue). Even Docsis 1.0 had 38Mbps speeds(down), so they had the technology available to increase the speeds (to say 20 down) years ago(euro docsis 1.0 had 50Mbps down). If they had split the nodes when D2 first came out (not necessarily switching) they could now have both the advanced speeds and the capacity to handle those speeds.

Ahh yes... BUT.. these other countries are also late entrants into the game of Broadband, many of them. A lot of these countries you speak of have two things going for them over the U.S. which is: 1) they entered upwards to 10 years after us, and 2) they're landscape is much more compact so upgrading and rebuilds come much easier and quicker than the sprawls of the United States. They also get a lot of money from the government to build out and some of them are nationalizing their infrustructure, which in the Unites States does goes against our way of life.

Case in point.. in So Cal,, the government who put money into one of the muni-systems wanted the operator to filter out anything objectionable and pornographic. As unconstitutional as that demand is/was, that was the game they play.

I'll personally stick with a little slower growth to avoid big brother, for one, telling me what I can and can't see.

..oh, and don't forget.. that 38mb was per node shared amongst users. In my city, the nodes run about 250 homes each which is on the low side compared to some systems. The former TWC system in the south metro here was running 1200 homes per node. Imagine 38mb on even a 250 homes passed node.

Most of those same countries have 50Mbps(plus) available for sub $50 a month and many have 100Mbps available(at sub $80) in most metro areas. I would also remind you that much of the internet backbone in the US was made with government funding (1996?).

Cable has always been shared, it is shared with D1 and it will still be shared with D3. If you follow the latest studies management compensation went from 40X average employee in the 80-90s to 4000X now. Take some of that money and split the nodes. Instead of 250 home switch to 125, you could stick with docsis 1 until the prices drop, bring speeds up to 20Mbps, and still not have any more congestion than we have currently(no caps needed).

reply to fiberguy
Frontier is mad about the 5GB cap, however considering their size, at least they are trying to keep their DSL network well maintained. Ever since the holidays up until a few days ago, Frontier had been having bandwidth issues at night where I'd go from 3Mbps/384kbps speeds to 400-800kbps/384kbps speeds. Turns out, there's a lot of heavy DSL users in my area, as those speeds would be like that until 12:30 AM after starting to decrease rapidly at 3:30PM, where my speed would slowly come back. However, even despite the caps which I'm against as well (I used close to 200GB of data between my two connections last month, maybe more D: ), their support is good. The night I called, it was 7PM, they answered immediately and wrote a trouble ticket for me after checking the basics. Tech came out next morning during a snow storm, saw that things were fine, we talked, and 3:30 as the speeds began to fall again, called up the Frontier tech that stopped by and he said that my prediction of them needing more bandwidth was 100% right. Well, a week later, as he stated, my connection got shifted to a brand new router with new routes in the CO, and no more slow downs/high pings at night .

I'm wondering though, since Frontier has been quiet in the news lately about their caps, I'm wondering if they scrapped the idea and started boosting their network as lately in the Frontier forum there has been one or two reports of Frontier bringing in more bandwidth to the COs for trouble areas.

reply to fiberguy