davoice
join:2000-08-12
Saxapahaw, NC | reply to Racerbob
Re: Look out...tiered pricing and monthly caps coming !
I'm in the Greensboro market. Whee.
}Davoice |
|
bop75
@rr.com
| reply to Racerbob
Just canceled my entire premium (pay channels) at 60 bucks per month and explained it was do to the upcoming caps in Rochester. Due to a number of trees along my southern property line, I can’t cancel everything till I’m sure satellite will work here. Road Runner will go the day the caps start. |
|
unknvoip
WWJID?
join:2006-07-25
Rochester, NY
 ·ViaTalk
| I will also be looking at reducing the cable bill. Especially after my package was increased a couple months ago with NO NOTICE.
They changed the billing cycle on the first bill so it wouldn't look so bad.
I hope they call to try to pimp 'digital' phone soon. |
|
Zyzzyva100
@rr.com
| reply to Racerbob
And I just canceled cable in favor of OTA HD and netflix on demand via my Tivo HD. Looks like I screwed. Where is the AG when the little guy is getting screwed. Forget AIG, I think we need to start bombarding cuomo's office with complaints about this. I get my phone and my tv via my broadband connection. How can this not be seen as anti-competitive in nature - especially seeing as how they are cherry picking the markets to do it in (where there is no other alternative). I have had unlimited cable internet since I was a freshman in HS (outside chicago), and I am now finishing up med school and look at how far back we will be going. |
|
Pizz
Hi
join:2000-10-27
Astoria, NY
 ·Verizon Online DSL
 ·RoadRunner Cable
| Just remember, 'those supporters' will say it's just a trial and nothing to be all worried about, cause it's just a trial.
You should write to your local congressmen/women - might not get too far, but least make them aware of this gouging. Cause plainly, thats all it is.
good luck fellow nyers =(
--
The more you talk, the less you listen. |
|
Dampier
Phillip M Dampier
join:2003-03-23
Rochester, NY
| reply to Racerbob
The entire matter is extremely depressing, not just for individual customers who are going to get slammed by this outrageous cap, but also for Rochester in particular which will now be in an extremely uncompetitive broadband backwater, saddled with a greedy cable company and a telephone company that has woefully lost touch with the times and is a shadow of its former self.
Telecommuters, home based businesses, large families, and those who are doing what everyone, including the cable company itself has encouraged people to do, use bandwidth, are now facing an absolutely enormous rate increase. If the current pricing models remain true, the rate customers pay now for standard RR service will bring a 20GB usage cap. To just double that to 40, you have to pay $15 more. Then, it's an outrageous $1/GB after that, for something that costs them around 10c.
These kinds of caps will inevitably eliminate most of the broadband video services, from Hulu and Joost to Netflix's set top box, Apple TV, Slingbox, and any other high bandwidth content that requires a broadband connection to deliver should these draconian caps go nationwide.
It's the equivalent of rationing the Internet.
I hate having to spend time on these kinds of battles, because all of these companies delivering these broadband products are not hurting for cash from their broadband divisions. Bandwidth costs continue to decline, not increase, as new technology and delivery mechanisms make it possible and easy to deliver the kinds of streaming and high bandwidth services now becoming available. Yes, there can be an initial investment expense from deploying some of the most robust delivery and distribution platforms, but not anywhere near the cost TW wants to saddle its customers with.
TW was already earning extra ancillary profits with their Turbo product, which becomes completely meaningless with these kinds of caps.
It's honestly unadulterated greed that drives these things. The video delivery business has become more competitive with additional price increases becoming more difficult to justify and an economy which makes shareholder return demands harder to deliver. So more profits will be requires from other divisions, and now they've settled on broadband as a cash cow, utterly destroying a working broadband model which has become more important for new business development and new markets.
Consumption based billing at fair prices is one thing, but there is nothing fair here. A maxed out tier of 40GB with overage fees of $1/GB at a $54.95 rate is a profit goldmine for anyone using between 40-100/GB a month, which is likely to be more and more common in most active Internet households with a mix of video watching, VOIP, video games, downloading, and browsing across multiple family members.
A 50GB household formerly paid $39.95. They will now pay $64.95.
A 75GB household formerly paid $39.95. They will now pay $74.95.
A 100GB household formerly paid $39.95. They will now pay $114.95.
Are these the "bandwidth hogs" TW will claim is costing them money, or just more and more average households who are using their Internet access in the ways RR itself markets.
And the other nonsense about how this "saves" people money who use less flies in the face of years of evidence those kinds of plans are barely, if ever marketed. And even most of those plans could see price hikes, and more importantly leave those on them at risk of severe penalties through overage charges for exceeding them. People on these lower tiers of service are there because of economic reasons. The impact of a run-up bill with overages is going to be a shell-shocker for most.
I'd also suggest that with a maxed out bundle at 40GB, TW's number crunchers have also considered the ever-increasing profit they will continue to earn as online applications consume more bandwidth year after year, making it more and more likely more of their customers will max out. There never is an "unlimited" plan available with these bandwidth cap plans.
BTW, Verizon FIOS has made it a point in their marketing to remind customers they do not have a usage cap, and that fact has made them a lot of new customers who do not want to worry whether they can watch one more episode of Benson on Hulu before exceeding their cap. If only Frontier were that smart. They are saddled with a technology limited DSL product that cannot compete on speed or consistency, and is more subject to technical faults. But they could strike marketing gold for the first time since their product was introduced to sell the fact they are NOT going to impose caps on customers. They can still quietly impose rational limits on outrageous usage (1TB a month and that sort of nonsense from servers, etc.), but they would score a huge advantage in a market with a cable modem product that is now effectively being rationed out. Would you switch to a lower speed provider with no ludicrous cap?
But Frontier's insanity knows no bounds, and instead they tried to impose a 5GB (!) cap on customers last summer that attracted sufficient negative press to have it temporarily suspended. Stupid. You can bet the cap issue will be revived again now that TW is talking about it.
Of course, these cities were chosen by TW not to get a representative or rational sample of the impact of a national bandwidth cap. That's because each of these selected markets is already saddled with caps or the likelihood of caps from the competition, so there is no downside to imposing their own. If they tried this in a Verizon FIOS area, customers would flee in seconds. They are doing this where they can get away with it.
Unfortunately for cities like Rochester, which are high technology comfortable, the residents are stuck because there simply is no viable competition. Clearwire has their own usage limits and an even poorer technology than DSL so wireless is out (and virtually all cellular providers have soft/hard limits themselves as well).
It's a very dark day for this community, with our only hope being a Verizon buyout of Frontier and progress towards a forward-thinking competitor which sees the long term benefits of deploying advanced technology which lets them deliver products and services in the future they can build revenue streams from and keep customer loyalty. TW wants a payday and will stick it to their customers again to get it.
And, by the way, should this company elect to exempt "preferred content providers" from their usage cap, that will open themselves up for a serious legal challenge and the political pandora's box of net neutrality: A backdoor way for major corporate interests to obtain de facto control of the marketplace by making independent competitors subject to usage caps that make funding those endeavors far more difficult.
StoptheCap! »www.stopthecap.com is getting reactivated after dealing with some of the Frontier crap from last summer. I absolutely will need help to make a difference with a much bigger company that is making these decisions from corporate headquarters and is not as impressed from local customer revolts. |
|
de
@rr.com
| reply to Racerbob
LOL ohh look they recommend on there website to use Road Runner Turbo to watch videos etc LMAO
»www.timewarnercable.com/SanAnton···ing.html |
|
de
@rr.com
| And lol -
Road Runner Turbo 15.0 Mbps with PowerBoost™
Our fastest Road Runner ever – giving you the speed you need for a super fast web experience. PowerBoost™ gives you an extra burst of speed when downloading big files, so videos, music and files go even faster than before.
Great speed without bandwidth = Genius |
|
Zyzzyva100
@rr.com
| reply to Racerbob
»www.oag.state.ny.us/online_forms···l_ag.jsp
Send a message to Cuomo. If enough people write in, maybe he will actually look into this. It wouldn't be the first time a NYS AG had stopped a business dead in their tracks when trying to screw the consumer.
Otherwise, anybody have any ideas if switching to earthlink would help, or do you think they will just pass on the bandwidth caps. |
|
RR User
@rr.com
| reply to Racerbob
I'm in the Raleigh/Durham area, and hearing the trials are now moving into this state has me ready to call in the moment it hits this area to cancel them and move to U-verse.
I just called them the other day to reduce my triple play bill down to $144... for the past 3 years I had been paying $186, and the last few months, nearly $200 a month after TW's recent rate hikes. Absolutely ridiculous, considering most all of NC is still on 7mb/*384*! or 10/*512*! With such a slow upload, I still feel like I'm using a broadband connection from a decade ago.
Just wondering though... do the stupid caps also apply to Earthlink service? since basically everywhere TWC operates you can also opt to get service though Earthlink. I can't imagine the caps would apply unless TW has the authority to completely change the level of service Earthlink provides it's customers... That too would pretty much be anti-competitive behavior.
The only way anything could ever be possibly done about this is by informing the public how much they are getting ripped off. The average person has no clue a gigabyte of bandwidth only costs a few pennies, not a $1. The only thing TW and other providers like them are doing is trying to brainwash the public into thinking bandwidth is an expensive and scarce resource, while TW reaps huge profits behind closed doors. The Oil companies have been doing the very same thing the past few years... see the trend? It goes on to cover just about every good and service you can think of, and now it's being applied to broadband, as if the massive profits the cable companies have been making are no longer enough to keep them happy. It's all about screwing the customer. |
|
Racerbob
join:2001-06-24
Webster, NY | reply to bop75
Then what bop75 ? Trust me.. Frontier DSL is NO better. |
|
Racerbob
join:2001-06-24
Webster, NY
·FrontierNet Intern..
·RoadRunner Cable
| reply to Zyzzyva100
said by Zyzzyva100 :» www.oag.state.ny.us/online_forms···l_ag.jspSend a message to Cuomo. If enough people write in, maybe he will actually look into this. It wouldn't be the first time a NYS AG had stopped a business dead in their tracks when trying to screw the consumer. Otherwise, anybody have any ideas if switching to earthlink would help, or do you think they will just pass on the bandwidth caps. Interesting suggestion ... probably Earhlink would pass along the caps. That is my guess. I am getting more depressed just thinking about this. |
|
bop75
@rr.com | reply to Racerbob
Dial up, 10 buck a month. This CEO is not going to cash in his stock off my back. |
|
Zyzzyva100
@rr.com
| If you can afford to only have broadband (ie you only need email) then you have no business even caring about this. I have to do work via the internet and my wife frequently remote desktops into work. I honestly could not function with my schooling and she couldn't function for parts of her job without broadband. |
|
RR User
@rr.com
| reply to Racerbob
There is no way TW could roll this out to their entire footprint, because in area's where they compete with FIOS, or uncapped U-verse, they would lose a large portion of their customers.
So I have no doubt, that they will roll this out to the least competitive areas... so not only do us lucky people get to poke along with 7mb/384, but we get to in style with 20-40GB caps. All the while competitive area's get speeds like 15/2 and above with no caps. Talk about taking advantage of the helpless. |
|
Zyzzyva100
@rr.com | reply to Zyzzyva100
Gah, and by only broadband I of course meant only dial-up. I suppose I should create an account or find my old one so I can edit. |
|
bop75
@rr.com
| reply to Zyzzyva100
Then your screwed, I not going to bend over and grab my ankles for this crap. I average 80 Gig a month right now and have been on R.R. in Rochester for better that 10 years. I'd hate to lose it, but I also bet, TW isn't going to like losing the $2200+ I pay them each year. The only way to hurt theses clowns is to hit them in the wallet.
|
|
Racerbob
join:2001-06-24
Webster, NY
·FrontierNet Intern..
·RoadRunner Cable
| said by bop75 :
The only way to hurt theses clowns is to hit them in the wallet.
Well then.. maybe an organized effort should be undertaken. A boycott ? Could we live with no internet for a period of time and could enough of us cancel Roadrunner here to make a difference ? I do NOT want to go to Frontier. You can bet that they will be getting their very restrictive montly cap in place very soon...if they haven't already. Rochester is in effect being held capture by these two backwards companies. You would think that it wouldn't have to be this way at this point in the short history of the internet. But it is. |
|
Zyzzyva100
@rr.com | Yes, I think an organized effort is the only chance we have. I also think bombarding Cuomo's office with complaints might get us noticed as well. |
|
Racerbob
join:2001-06-24
Webster, NY
·FrontierNet Intern..
·RoadRunner Cable
| said by Zyzzyva100 :
Yes, I think an organized effort is the only chance we have. I also think bombarding Cuomo's office with complaints might get us noticed as well.
I plan on e mailing his office as soon as I can. Sometime this evening. |
|
